Demon Uncaged
by Solarsearcher
Summary: Freedom and safety are not the same thing. One must choose which they will have to determine how they will live. After the outbreak, both options went at a premium. Sven has yet to make his choice between the two, but either one will come with a heavy price. (This story is based on a fanfiction created by Drexbann15 and TWDKennyGamer'sBro. Charge and credit belongs to them.)
1. To Be An Angel

Blue clashed with yellow in the sky. The winds blew through both, pushing the only cloud in the sky between them. The sun, however, kept pressing against the church.

And, of course, the two men sitting atop it.

Sven had his legs dangling over the edge of the tiled roof. His pants- longer than his legs to the point where they could cover his toes if not for his socks and shoes- kept the heat on him as if it were its job to. He'd take them off, but he had company. That was odd; most of the time, people tended to avoid him.

His "friend" was quite rudely smoking a cigarette that he held between the forefinger and thumb of his right hand. Simon was wearing the same pants that Sven was required to wear. The fabric- cheap wool that Sven suspected had once belonged to a poor farmer- clung to Simon's skin by the sweat of his thighs and shins. His cigarette burned at the top with a heat that could never match the power of the sun above. Sven _swore_ he could see waves of heat beating against the only cloud in the sky.

Simon brought the cigarette to his lips, compressing them together around the… whatever the small tube was made of. Sven had never liked smokers or smoking, and had made a point of learning as little as possible about it. The only thing he knew about it was that it could kill a man sure as a bullet could. Honestly, who would take poison to their lips anyway?

The flames of the small rod brightened and brimmed the end of the cigarette for a brief moment as Simon inhaled. Foul odors took visible form in the bright light as Simon suddenly coughed, dropping the cigarette onto the roof next to him. The fire dimmed. Simon hacked again, leaning forward over the edge of the roof. Sven didn't react beyond a raised eyebrow.

When the fit of coughing subsided, Simon sighed and sat back. He didn't pick up his cigarette. "Sorry," Simon apologized.

Sven grunted. He stared at the sizzling stick next to the other man's legs. They'd both be sizzling like that soon enough. Bollocks… the _church_ might very well melt down beneath the heat.

Simon noticed him staring at the cigarette and groaned. He picked it up and brought it up to his lips again. He inhaled much slower this time, the flames growing bright again and staying that way for longer. The smoker removed the tube from his puckered lips and flicked the thing away. Sven watched it go.

It fell to the ground quickly, but he was able to follow it with his eyes the whole way. It wasn't a big enough fire to set fire to the grass down below. Since, of course, there was no grass down below. Just monsters.

The demons- as Sven's group called them- were few in number this morning. Only a couple, but it only took one to tear a man's throat out of his neck and turn him into one or them. Sven very clearly remembered his first experience with them. He had been walking.

Walking. Nowhere in particular. Just down a sidewalk on a back road some twenty miles away from any highway. Someone else had been walking through the center of the road at the time, stumbling over every pothole and rock it passed. Sven had merely assumed it to be a drunk man, and had told the wanker to get out of the road before someone else drove over him. But the thing's eyes…

Sven shuddered. The demon had had entirely white eyes. It shouldn't have been able to see him. But it did. Or… maybe it had just heard him and was able to smell his blood at the time. He wasn't quite sure, but follow him it did. Its snapping jaws and fierce groans had sent him running back down the other way.

The demons didn't have minds of their own, that Sven was sure of. Satan must have sent the hell-spawn up to cause destruction as mindless soldiers; at least, according to what he was told by his group. Nobody knew where they had risen up from, but that didn't change the fact that they were there. Wandering around.

Most of them had eyes that were closer to functional than the one he had first encountered, but the image still haunted him to this day.

Simon puffed out smoke from his mouth with an exaggerated exhalation. Sven hadn't even realized that Simon was still holding onto that last breath of death. The smoke formed a trail up towards the sky, seeming to disappear directly into the cloud above them.

Sven breathed out himself; no smoke came out of his mouth.

"I forget why I came up here," Simon finally said.

"Did you feel like jumping after one last smoke?" Sven asked.

Simon have him a flat stare. "I've got a few more still left in me."

"You better not. I know it's not healthy to put things inside you that don't belong there."

"And I know it's not healthy sleeping like you do," Simon said. "You can't be sleeping for five hours a day, Sven."

"Lack of sleep won't kill me," Sven replied dismissively. He didn't particularly have a problem with Simon, but he came up to the roof every morning before the clock struck six so that he could think to himself. Talking was not something he enjoyed, especially with someone who was a real person instead of an imaginary ghost beside him.

"You think cigarettes will?" Simon asked.

Sven looked at the cigarette down below them. The embers had died. One of the demons had been standing over it. "I swear to God I'm gonna outlive you."

Simon's nose crinkled. "Don't take the-"

"Don't take the name of the Lord in vain," Sven interrupted. "Yes, yes. I know your mother would kill me if she found out."

Simon slowly tuned his head away from Sven. "You still shouldn't."

Simon's mother, Katherine, probably wouldn't _actually_ kill him if she found out that he'd been using God's name for no reason, but she would revoke his wine privileges. That would be tragic indeed. "I won't tell her if you won't."

"You'd better hope not," Simon said with a sly smile. "Those demons down there'd be more forgiving than her."

"Of course…" Sven trailed off.

The monsters down below had already taken too much. _They_ were the ones who needed to be forgiven. But he never would.

Simon scratched this neck. "I wish we had some water to spare. It's damn hot out here."

Sven pointed ahead to a dark green patch of marshland nearby directly across from the church. That didn't make a lot of sense to Sven. Who builds a church next to a bloody swamp? "Plenty of water down there."

"Sven, enough with the bullshit. It's too hot for this."

"No one told you to come up here," Sven stated.

"What? You want me to leave?"

Sven said nothing. The demons down below were are looking towards the swamp for some reason.

Simon frowned. "What are you doing up here, anyway?"

Sven kept his mouth shut. What did it matter why he was outside the walls, fighting against the sun? He'd been doing this nearly everyday when the weather was agreeable enough. Nobody had ever asked about it. Simon's interest was purely to satiate his boredom.

Simon reached into his pants pocket. He had to squeeze and twist his hand to get it inside of his pocket, as the sweat of his thighs had stuck the inside of his pants to his leg. He pulled out a small, rectangular object with a flap on top. Simon opened the flap and revealed a trio of unused cigarettes. He pulled one out and put it to his lips as he put the remaining cigarettes in the box onto the roof beside him. "Got a light?"

Sven got to his feet quickly, noticing that the demons were all wandering towards the swamp.

Simon looked up at him with the cigarette still in his mouth. "Hey, I wasn't serious," he complained in a slurred voice. He removed the cigarette and put it next to the box, returning his voice to normal. "Just having some fun. You need to lighten-"

"Someone's out there," Sven said.

Simon looked toward the ground and scanned for anything other than the creatures below. "Where?"

"In the swamp!" Sven turned and rushed to the roof exit back into the church. He ignored Simon's calls and opened the door, rushing downstairs. The church was only three stories up, so he didn't have that far to run, but the heat from before had been very oppressive, smothering his body. He was panting for breath by the time that he reached ground floor.

Sven burst through the door, and paused. He was in the congregation room. There was someone else in the room with him. Odd; most of the time, they would be in the basement for the generator powered air conditioning or the chapel on the upper floor (the one he was in was normally used as a cafeteria of sorts). A woman was kneeling between two church pews, her eyes closed, fingers interlocked as her elbows rested on the wood of the bench in front of her. Her back was steadied by the pew behind her. Her red hair was braided down to her neck, kept short to avoid it getting caught on things like door hinges or the hands of the demons. What was her name again?

 _No time for that,_ Sven thought. He dashed down the aisle, his stride startling the red-headed woman. She turned warily as he passed by her and jumped for the door. He got a finger around the handle and pushed it down as he slammed into the door. The thick wood cracked beneath his weight. The door was built to be opened slowly, no forced open.

The sunlight had not faded when he'd left the rooftop in a haste. It momentarily stunned him as he raised his arm above his head to shield his eyes from the intense brightness. When he regained his vision, he saw that the demons were all looking at him.

 _Bollocks,_ Sven cursed mentally. _Shouldn't have made that much noise._

Panic surged through him as he saw their faces. Even without the white eyes, they were still horrifying.

Sven didn't bother counting them- not because he didn't know how to count- because counting would waste time he could be using to kill them.

 _They only go down with a headshot,_ he reminded himself. Sven took a breath and let the fear wash away. The demons began walking towards him. Sven slipped a hand into his pocket for his side knife.

Then he checked his other one.

His eyes widened as he realized that he hadn't taken his knife when he'd woken up this morning. He'd just gone up to the roof without any thought of what he'd do in an emergency. He'd only gone up with his rifle and he'd left that on the roof.

 _Idiot!_ Sven looked back at the monsters moving towards him. He looked back between the swamp and church indecisively. Did he have time to go back and collect any weapons?

Someone screamed in the swamp. That made his decision for him.

Sven purposefully walked towards the oncoming host of the hell-spawn. He didn't have to kill them to get past them.

A single demon was very far ahead of the others, and it reached a single arm out for him. The other arm was just a jagged piece of exposed bone. There was dirt and grime all over its clothes. It munched on empty air like it was demonstrating how it would kill him. The only question was which part of him it would eat first.

Sven raised both of his arms and grabbed the demon by its shoulders. Leaning to the side, he twisted and shoved it over his outstretched leg, sending it sprawling to the earth.

Sven kept walking toward the other demons. Three of them were attacking in what was almost a semicircle. That would be tough to fight without a weapon, but he didn't have time to fight.

Sven paced around the edge of the pack to get around them. What the demons did next surprised him, since they weren't supposed to be able to coordinate and keep formations. The demon at the far end of the pack adjusted so that it wove itself between the other two, all still coming at him in a semicircle. They were relentless; slow, yet relentless. It might be best if-

A demon rounded the corner of the church directly in front of him. He hadn't even seen it from the roof since it hadn't been in front of him.

 _Bollocks._ Sven turned around quickly and saw that the demon he'd tripped was standing again. No, not standing. Stumbling. Stumbling toward him.

He was surrounded.

Suddenly, a rough hand gripped the demon he'd tripped by the back of the neck and a sound of sheathing silenced its growls. The jaws of the cursed thing remained open as it fell to the earth, revealing a red-maned woman holding a red-maned knife.

 _Brooke,_ he realized. _That's her name._

"Get back inside," Brooke ordered. To her credit, she actually looked like she had authority in her posture.

The swamp let out another scream.

Sven charged the single demon that had rounded the church to corner him. He pushed the thing by its chest to get it out of his way. He turned and continued toward the swampland. Behind him, Brooke stabbed one of the three demons below its chin as the other two chased after him.

More demons in front of him began to move to surround him again. Not quite in a semicircle, but in an overwhelming wave of monsters that growled in warning. Sven saw an opening between two demons and rammed through it, shoving both in opposite directions.

Once he was through, there was a pair of the bloody things attacking from his far right and near left, and a third one in a shift from his ten o'clock. He didn't have enough hands to push away all three, and he couldn't flank in either direction because of the cluster behind him. He had to run through the one on his left and hope he could-

A loud gunshot boomed against the skyline. The skull of the one at his ten o'clock busted open in a spray of dark red.

 _Bloody hell!_ Sven dared a look behind and saw Brooke with her knife still out. There was blood all over her killing arm. The sound that the gunshot had made was too loud to be anything but a rifle blast, and there was no way Brooke could have handle one with a single arm. A high caliber bullet from a rifle…

Sven looked up at the roof and saw a reflection of light from the sun against the rifle he had left up there in his haste to get downstairs. Simon lifted his head up from the scope of it and gave him a nod down below.

Sven saw his chance. He turned and faced the direction that the dead demon lay in. He heard another gunshot as he began running. Another gunshot rang out, and a demon- the one that had been on his right- fell in front of his path. It was still moving; Simon had only shot it in the knee.

He had no time to react. Stopping short would make him stop right within reach of it and he'd probably trip as well. Sven gave his best leap and jumped as high as he could. Unfortunately, the tightness of his pants made it impossible to lift his legs over the body.

One of its rotten hands caught his foot and made him tumble. Sven cursed as he hit the ground. The bloody demon kept its grip on his foot, even as all of his weight went from midair to hot earth.

Of course, there wasn't any grass outside of the church for him to grab a fistful of to claw himself away, so sticking his fingers into the dirt didn't help very much. Sven cursed himself for being so careless he saw the shadow of the other demon rapidly approaching him. In fact, it seemed to be moving very fast… too fast to be one of them.

Sven turned his head and caught sight of a glint of metal in the sunlight. Brooke stabbed the demon in the head with the red shimmer in her fist. The knife came out even redder than before.

 _What is Simon doing up there?_ Sven glanced up at the rooftop and saw a quick flash of light that shot out a booming bullet. It streaked down and cut through the air until it found its way through a head of a demon below. There weren't more than three still standing.

Sven saw a figure behind Simon forcefully pull him to his feet and drag him away from his side of the roof.

Something tackled Brooke from behind, and she cried out in shock. The demon on top of her fell over her instead of on top of her.

Right into Sven.

It hadn't occurred to him that he ought to have stood up, and now he paid for it as the demon flailed its arms for him. Somehow, it rolled right over his shoulder when the stomach- empty, he hoped- had met Sven's shoulder. It landed on its own shoulder, and immediately reached out for him.

Sven flipped his body over in the other direction and crawled as fast as he could. The growls and groans suddenly stopped with a _squish_. Sven didn't stand up until he felt he was far away enough to do so safely in case the things was still alive. He found Brooke with her foot planted in the back of its head.

Sven heard another scream from the swamp that got cut off abruptly. He turned around and ran through the brush, swatting at branches snapping against him. Sven hoped he wasn't too late. If a man died because of his foolishness in not taking his knife...

A few moments later, Sven placed his foot down and found only empty air beneath him. Sven flailed his arms out, trying to grab one of the branches. His left hand found one, and the wood swung him over that way. He landed on a large rock sticking out of a dirtied pond before involuntarily swinging back. The branch did not have the momentum to carry him all of the way, however, so when he tried to stick his legs out to get back to the dry land, his feet found nothing to set down on, and he was forced to hold on to the branch.

He swung back and forth, desperately clinging to the branch as the human pendulum found its way to a stop. The wood above him crackled. Sven looked up slowly. The smaller leaves had fallen from higher up, and one landed over his eyes.

The branch snapped.

Sven cried out for a brief moment before he felt the stinging heat of the water that drowned the sounds he was trying to make. Sven barely had enough time to shut his eyes before his entire body was underwater.

Mud and grime threatened to clog his nose and ears. Without opening his eyes, Sven picked a direction he hoped was up and swam for what he hoped was the surface. Something slick drakes his back. _Please be the branch._

It didn't take him that long to find air to breathe, even if it wasn't fresh. He sucked in air once his head popped out of the swamp water. Sven opened his eyes and quickly searched for a way out of the murky pond. He found the rock his feet had skimmed before and waded over to it. The face was smooth and slick with water- not to mention his own wet body- but he was able to mount the stone in quick time.

He couldn't quite get his feet on top of it, so he was forced to kneel upon the inclined rock. Sven roved with his eyes for the source of the screams. He did hear any screams, but he did see a discolored section of the pond where something large enough to be a facedown body was making bubbles underwater.

Sven jumped back into the water- it wasn't deep enough to submerge him in the area he hit- and ran as fast as the slush would let him. It took him a few seconds to reach the bubbling area, but when he did, he grabbed the body by its clothes and hauled it back out of the water.

The body snarled as soon as its head came free of the water. Sven tossed it aside with a grunt and reached down toward a form still there. It wasn't making bubbles.

Sven found the collar of a shirt and pulled on it. A man's face came out of the water, nose and corners of his lips dripping water. His hair was matted down due to the slush weighing down the curls in the ends. Each of his eyes were closed, but the eyelids were blinking rapidly.

 _Alive!_ Sven grabbed his arm below the surface and pulled it out of the water and wrapped it over his shoulders. The man he was carrying was about Sven's weight, but he had no illusions of his own strength; he couldn't lift the man up.

Sven half-dragged, half-heaved the stranger back toward the large rock sticking out of the water. He could hear bubbles from strangles below the water from the demon he'd tossed. Once he got to the rock, he pinpointed the direction back to the church by following the slope back.

Brooke appeared at the edge of the pond. She knelt down and held out her hands for the man Sven was carrying. He shifted the man in front of him and handed him off as Brooke struggled to get him out of the water. Sven tried helping by raising the man's legs, and it appeared to help as she set him down on his back next to the tree that had lost its branch.

Sven pulled himself up by his hands and tried to get one foot up between his hands, but it kicked against the lip of the pond and caused him to fall. He didn't plunge underwater- he'd had enough time to right himself before hitting the water- but it still irritated him that his clothes would stick even longer more. He tried getting out again, placing his foot between his hands as he escaped the pond and standing up on it. He stepped over to the man and Brooke. She looked up at him and nodded. He was still alive.

Sven helped the woman to her feet before he went to help the man to his feet. His eyes were open, but he wasn't moving beyond his chest rising and falling. His fingers were scrunched, glued to his shirt. Sven sighed, bending over to grab one of his hands. He was unresponsive.

Sven grunted as he pulled the man's hand off of his shirt and used it to pull him up. The man sagged, so Sven was forced to wrap his own arm under the stranger's shoulders and walk him out of the swamp.

Sven looked down with satisfaction and saw that one of the man's legs was dragging behind him as he awkwardly hobbled forward on one. The leg that wasn't moving appeared to be swollen at the knee. A fracture, most likely.

Brooke walked ahead of them. Unlike when he had frantically charged through the shifty brush, she took care to avoid certain branches in her path by ducking beneath them. Sven swatted a few of them out of his way.

When he came out of the swamp, Brooke walked a little faster to deal with a stray demon on her right. She made no attempt to remain quiet, and the thing turned to face her upon hearing her footsteps on the dirt. It groaned and reached out a hand for her.

Brooke stepped up to it as Sven passed her. He didn't bother looking back at her killing it; he was content to just hear it. Surprisingly, there were two thunks that he heard.

Sven helped the man inside the church. He walked over to the nearest of the benches and sat him down on it, not caring that both of them were covered in swamp water. The stranger then turned and laid himself down on it. The doors closed behind him.

Sven turned to Brooke behind him. "Thank you," he said.

Her eyes were focused on the front of the area near the altar. Sven followed her gaze. There was a congregation of eight people all approaching. None of them looked pleased.

Sven sighed, standing up to face his group. At their head was Peter, a stout man with a very noticeable blister where his mustache should be. As required by Katherine, all of them were supposed to wear clothes that covered their skin whenever they went into view of others, but Peter was the only one who had ever really needed to wear those clothes. His stoutness probably would have given others nightmares if uncovered.

Micah walked immediately behind him, fists clenched. Micah was shorter than the rest of the group- basically a good foot below Sven at five-foot-ten (yes, he used the American measuring system)- so when he got angry, he could almost be seen as an American Napoleon. Of course, there was no way Napoleon would be as bald as Micah.

At the back of the group, the very recognizable Angus strode confidently in his seven-foot-two frame. The brute from Scotland had never shown any respect for Sven (likely because of their differing nationalities), but never outright hostility in public like what he was doing now. He wore a takama, since they'd been able to find no pants that would fit him. It covered his body down to his calves, and his front was connected by a strong tape. He didn't know where they'd found a takama, since they really hadn't been used since the gladiators had died out, but it appeared to be in relatively good condition. It was easy to clean, too, since it didn't require any soap, as such a thing would not have been found back then.

At the right edge was Marcus; a tall man in his own right. If the Scottish giant weren't there, Marcus would be the tallest. He was missing a few of his teeth on the right side of his mouth, though Sven didn't know why. On top of his skin covering clothes, he wore a vest. Katherine would approve of extra clothes as long as they did not provoke gluttony. He didn't get how a vest wouldn't count as wearing something unnecessarily, but Sven wasn't going to pick a fight with a man who literally looked down at him.

The left edge was covered by Abigail. She had blonde hair that was boyishly short. Sven had actually mistaken her for a man when they had first met. She didn't know, since they never talked. Sven normally didn't talk to anyone when he didn't have to; he only knew their names through repeated ceremonies in the church.

Seven people stopped in front of him. Peter moved past him to Brooke. Sven watched him whisper something to her, then turning around to look at him. Sven opened his mouth to speak, but Peter had no intention of letting him pick how to approach their situation.

"Mind telling us why you brought in a guy we've never met before without asking us first?"

 _He's trying to make it seem like I made a decision that put us all in danger. Not that far from the truth._ "He would have died if I went to ask for permission."

"How is that our problem?" Peter argued.

"It's not. It's mine."

"You brought in a stranger!" Micah accused. "Of course it's our problem."

Sven turned to him harshly. "He would have died!"

"We don't know this guy," Peter shot back. "Maybe he should have died."

Sven circled around Peter so he wasn't surrounded by accusations, placing Brooke at his back. "I'm not just gonna let someone die when there's something I could have done."

Micah stepped forward. "We are not going to bring in everyone we meet. You wanna go save the world? The door's right there, idiot."

"You think this was a good idea?" Peter asked. "Do you have any idea what you've done? Those demons are gonna be coming this way because of you." He gestured at the man. He appeared to be unconscious. "That man is gonna bring death to us."

Sven glared at Peter. "I don't see you doing anything about it."

"Pretty sure you did nothing either."

"Sure about that?" Sven mocked. "Pretty sure I went outside when they were there."

"You got a death wish?" Marcus asked. "I can help with that."

"You don't do anything!" Sven shouted.

Abigail and Peter both started yelling at him, but it was Micah who stepped forward. He looked ready to fight, but Sven just let himself loom over the short man. That didn't stop Micah, as he got up in his face on his tiptoes. Micah pushed, but did not get enough strength behind it to even shake Sven. Sven pushed back by reflex, and Micah took a step backward. Brooke and Peter got between them, prying them off each other as each man tried to reach for the other.

"That's enough!" a voice commanded from above, booming over everyone on the floor.

Sven looked over the shoulders and heads of those before him and saw two people approaching from the altar. One was Simon, who kept his eyes downcast shamefully. The other was his mother, Katherine. She wore her skin covering clothes like she had mandated, but hers was a single dress that covered the entire body. She kept her hair in; tucked between her shoulder blades. Her eyes were a piercing gold, which contrasted lightly with the brown tint of her clothes and hair.

Sven felt a stab of panic and a sense of urgency to run, just as he always did when he saw her. She didn't know, did she?

Simon trailed after his mother as she stepped down the steps to the pedestal to meet the group. She didn't need to use caution over her flowing dress; it fit naturally to her.

"I am ashamed that such violence is prone to man in the house of God," she scolded.

 _Just speak normally, please._ It was always a chore to try and sort through whatever the meaning of her words was when she was speaking to more than one person.

"We are meant to be above such actions of disgrace. We are the chosen few that shall take our own salvation to the grave. We are to send the demons to hell, not each other. Have you no shame?"

"She's right, lads," Angus said. Sven didn't know whether to agree or disagree. "You can talk instead of brawl, right?"

The others had the nerve to nod like they understood what Katherine had meant in the first place. Even Brooke nodded.

Katherine stopped in front of the group, the people in the back parting so she could see the troublemakers. Her eyes rested deplorably on Brooke. She looked down. Sven knew better than to make eye contact. Just as she turned to face him, Sven looked over at the stranger. Bollocks… he could feel her yellow eyes on his body. Eyes as yellow as the sun above.

The man was sound asleep. Despite all of the yelling that was going on a few feet away, he was sleeping. _Damn._ If he wasn't going to wake up from that, he wouldn't be able to defend himself. _I guess the job falls to me._

"Someone tell me who this man is," Katherine demanded.

Sven understood that part. "He's a survivor," Sven stated.

"His name?"

"I don't know," Sven answered, finally peeling his eyes off of the man and returning it to Katherine. "He hasn't had the chance to talk."

"Well, where did he come from?"

"I don't know that either."

"What do you know about him?" Katherine asked.

"I found him in the swamp," Sven said.

"He was screaming pretty loud," Brooke murmured.

Katherine stepped back to address them all. "The Lord has given us the task of tending to each other and keeping faith alive. We help our own and we fight the demons. We do not, however, bring more in than our number of holiness."

Sven's eyes widened in confusion. "We cannot keep him here," Peter said. "We don't have the means to care for him."

Sven nodded. "That's ridiculous. We have more than enough food for us all. We can take care of him for a few days until we figure out what to do with him."

"No, we can't." Katherine moved in close again.

"Yes, we can." Sven looked her in the eyes for the first time. Yellow. Fiery. Heated.

 _Bollocks… does she know?_

"No, we can't," Brooke said somberly.

Sven turned to her. She wasn't looking at either of them, instead choosing pleading her case to the floor. She was standing next to Peter, who kept a hand on her shoulder.

"Brooke," Sven prodded. She did not respond. "We can help him."

"No," Brooke said shakily. She turned to face him. "We can't." Her cheeks and temples were as red as her hair. "The demons got him."

"He'll be fine," Sven asserted.

"No!" Brooke denied with an edge of anxiety dipping into her voice. "They got him!"

"What does that mean?" Sven asked flatly.

"There!" Angus exclaimed. He pointed at the stranger. "He's got a mark on his arm. A bite! A bite!"

Sven turned on the unconscious man sharply. A bite? He hadn't seen one while carrying the man inside. He rushed over to the bench that the stranger was sleeping on and knelt down beside him. One of his arms was dangling beyond the bench and angled to the floor. Dribbles of crimson covered his wrist, slowly gliding to the ends of his middle and index fingers before they dropped to the floor. Sven followed the red up his arm to a wound above the forearm.

Three gashes adorned the flesh in an even pattern. Marked by what could be an upper jaw, a curved path of thin red as long as a hand bled out over the elbow. Two other smaller and more straight puncture points trailed brighter red beneath the longer opening. One was about as small as a stab wound that led in deeper than the others. The other cut through wrinkles from the edge of the longer cut to halfway through, rendering it as long as a thumb.

Sven ran a finger underneath both cuts and pressed in on the skin below. The blood poured out at a faster rate. He squeezed tighter until both of the smaller cuts were nearly invisible save for the red that flagged it.

Something was wrong. No demon had such well-preserved teeth that it would not leave as single jagged mark from either end of the cut. It was certainly as wide as a bite, but the length was too big.

"It's not a bite," Sven announced, looking back up at his group. He stood up, flinging the bleeding arm back onto the man's chest. He didn't wake up from that. He walked through the people that had gathered around the pew.

"What're you talking about, lad?" Angus questioned. "I see the bite on there."

"It's not a bite," Sven repeated. "Demons don't have such big jaws. It could have been a rock for all we know."

"Rocks don't bite people," Marcus stated.

Silence.

Brooke pinched her nose. "Yes, Marcus; rocks don't bite people."

Marcus pointed at Sven. "Ya see? It has to be a demon."

Sven was still in shock at the utter stupidity of the previous statement that he was very confused by Marcus's pointing. Sven shook his head quickly to work up a response.

"Look," Peter intervened. "It's a bite. It-"

"It could have been a rock!" Sven argued again, hoping that Marcus wouldn't speak up so that he wouldn't lose his train of thought. "Bites aren't that big, and they aren't as straight as that."

"Neither are rocks," Abigail said. "No cut is that thin from anything but a tooth."

"Okay, maybe it wasn't a rock," Sven allowed, "but it can't be a bite."

"Why not?" Micah mocked. "Looks like one to me."

"Bites aren't that big!" Sven shouted, reaching his limit. He calmed down a bit before continuing. "Brooke, you know that it's not a bite. Tell them."

Brooke didn't look at him. He looked to her for support and had only seen her back shudder.

"It has to be done," Katherine concluded. "We cannot have a demon in this church, and we cannot let this man become one. We would be no better ourselves." She looked directly at him. "No, we cannot save him. We can only keep him down." She turned to Angus and Marcus. "Put him on the platform."

The two large men nodded. They wordlessly moved over to the church bench and hefted the man up by his shoulders and ankles. Angus just made it look… effortless. It even looked like he was humming to himself. Sven doubted that Marcus would have been needed with Angus on the job.

"Katherine!" Sven challenged. "Stop this! I told you that-"

"How did you find him?" Katherine asked gruffly. "He was under attack, wasn't he? For all you know, it was a bite that a demon gave before he came into our swamp." Everyone else started following Angus toward the platform near the altar, including Brooke and Simon.

"I- what? What does that have to do with anything?"

"They are demons," she continued. "Demons cause pain and death, and not just with their teeth. Who is to say what they have done to this poor man? What happened is between God and this man; not for us to decide. It is his time, and we must help him how we can."

"But you don't even know what he wants."

"It is a task that must be done." She turned away from him. "I am sorry." Katherine began walking to the rest of the group beside the platform.

Angus had already put his charge down. _That was fast._

Sven stood still. They had just decided a man's fate in a minute. They had all been against him from the start, not caring what angle he approached. Sven growled lowly and clenched his fists. He stepped toward the procession.

Then he felt a hand clamp down on his shoulder. It tightened.

"Just let them have their fun, man," a low voice said from behind him.

Sven froze.

He didn't have to turn around to know who was behind him. It was a man who was almost singlehandedly responsible for why Sven had stayed away from others in his group as often as possible. The man who was almost singlehandedly responsible for the way each member of the group had become so mistrustful of others and hateful to people outside of the church. He had only been with them for six months after arriving in a pickup truck with a busted headlight (Sven did not know its current location), but in that time, he had gradually corrupted the others into passionate believers in their own superiority.

Keeping his hand on Sven's shoulder, the man lethargically rounded him, clearly savoring the fear he was spreading. He had a blue denim jacket unzipped and unbuttoned to reveal a green sweatshirt that he wore despite the intense heat. He favored a stubble-ground chin with a dot below the lip of full hair. A blue cap covered his brown hair. The loose, filmy look of his face and leathery skin, coupled with his smile that no snake could match, made Sven flinch. Worst of all: the man had green eyes too round and too big for his head. Perpetually widened, always dangerous.

 _Those eyes…_ those eyes!

Nate's devilish grin somehow grew even wider than it had been before. "You know what? We don't have enough fun around here." Nate moved his head in closer and spoke again in a whisper. "I might be able to get some good stuff tonight. _Real_ good stuff."

Sven didn't speak.

Katherine was standing over the stranger's head as everyone else surrounded his body. They each held one of their own wrists out of what Sven guessed was respect.

"Or, if, you know," Nate continued, "if you want to stay sober, we could always share a smoke. Whaddaya say, mate?" Nate pulled back, a somewhat ferocious look flashing in his eyes for a single second. "Wanna share old survivor stories over a few puffs?"

Katherine began reciting a prayer while the others bowed their heads. It was a prayer in which she was justifying the death of a stranger by citing him as beneath the rest of them while they needed to survive for the greater good. When she was performing specific prayers, she was slightly more understandable than when just making general declarations. Sven could see a sly smile on Angus's face, though he was not looking back at him.

"Or, as a matter of fact, why don't we do both? That could be fun." Spittle flew from Nate's mouth as he finished that sentence. Some landed on Sven's face, but he didn't dare move to wipe it away. Nate spitting like that with his dangerous look only displayed a fraction of his bloodthirsty lust.

At the foot of the altar, Katherine- without ceasing her prayers- extracted a long knife from within her robes. He recognized it very well as a ceremonial knife. It wasn't very useful when it came to cutting, but it could prick and stab like the devil himself. She cupped the hilt with both hands and raised it to her chest as her voice rose in anticipation.

Sven was still frozen in fright. WHY?! _Why did this man have such_ EYES?

"Dude?" Nate asked with feigned concern. "Cat got your tongue?" He glanced over his shoulder at the occurrence in front of the altar. "Oh, that." He looked at Sven with a devious smirk.

"Blessed are we," Katherine recited, "who in the name of charity and goodwill, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for we are truly their keeper and the finder of lost children." Sven knew that she was nearing the end of the prayer by how she was slowly raising the knife over her head.

Sven finally found his breath and inhaled.

"No turning back now, huh?" Nate whispered.

In a rush, Katherine slammed the knife down. Sven saw two people flinch- one of them was Brooke- but the rest remained stoic as the metal pierced the center of the sleeping man's chest and drove all the way down until the steel could no longer be seen. There was very little blood for the cleanness and swiftness of the knife thrust, but there was no doubt that the man had indeed died when his chest ceased all movement. His eyes were closed.

Sven exhaled.

Katherine removed the knife from the dead man, the shining luster now a shimmering red. She inspected the knife for something, then knelt down to place her palm on the dead man's forehead. She bowed her head as everyone else raised theirs. Katherine stood up somberly after a long breath. "Amen."

"Amen," echoed the others around the body.

Nate made a guttural groan beside him. "Amen," he moaned in an exaggerated voice.

Sven turned his head away from Nate's gnarly smirk. The people around the dead man began to disperse, though Sven had not heard a dismissal from Katherine. She herself turned away from the stranger and walked up the steps to the altar. She walked around it and bowed her head in reverence. Sven guessed that she was thanking someone for the strength to do it.

Sven did not know why someone would give her that strength.

"Well, whenever you're looking for a good time," Nate said in an obscenely sensual tone, "you know where to find me." Nate winked. He shoved his hands into his pockets and left, heading for the stairwell to the basement.

Sven sighed in relief. He shuddered visibly, thinking about how close he had come to being killed. Every time that man came near… every time he saw those eyes…

Katherine was no longer in the room. Sven walked to where the people were, but was stopped when someone grabbed his arm from the side.

 _Not again! No more!_

Sven spun to face Nate, but found someone else instead. It was Simon, but he had a demeanor that seemed particularly off-putting. The way his eyes were not looking at him was a direct contrast to the way Nate had been eyeing him. Simon's hand on his arm was the only indication that he had something to say.

"Katherine wants to see you in the hole," Simon said simply. He let go of Sven without ever looking at him and walked over to Peter.

 _Did Simon just call his mother by her name?_ Sven thought.

Great. Katherine wanted to speak to him privately in her office, or "the hole", as the others called it. It had no religious meaning; it was just a joke they used. It was one of the few things he had learned from them that he related with them.

Sven sighed, walking over to the stairwell. Not the one Nate had used, in case he was waiting for him there, but the other one behind the altar. Nobody said anything to him as he passed; nobody cared enough to try.

Sven made it up the stairwell without running into Nate, thankfully, but he couldn't let himself forget that he was going to get an earful from Katherine.

Her office was located in the upper section of the third floor. Sven did not know why the church was built to have three floors with an accessible roof, nor did he know why it was built next to a swamp. The only thing he knew about it was its name and that Katherine had belonged to it before the outbreak.

Now that they were a year after the outbreak, the church belonged to Katherine.

He found the office easily enough; it was the door in a green hallway that had a marking on the door that read 'Reverend Katherine' in a silver plating. The other door was simply a restroom.

Sven didn't bother knocking. The door didn't have a lock, so he simply turned the handle and pushed. The room was quite spacious, though that was to be expected considering how large the church was.

What was not expected, however, was that Katherine was actually kneeling on the floor in front of a fireplace. In her hand, she held an iron fire poker that she used to tend the fire. It was barely lit, with just the rims of each log on fire. It couldn't have been lit more than thirty seconds before he'd entered.

 _It's ninety degrees outside,_ he thought irritably. _If I wanted to be cooked, I'd go back up to the roof._

Finally, Katherine, pushed back the upper log just in the right position at the thinnest portion and the top log began to glisten upon the surface as it slowly grew in brightness. The backlight intensified as the rest of the top log became afire.

 _I'm gonna get grilled no matter what, I suppose_. Sven cleared his throat loudly, announcing his presence. If Katherine was surprised, she didn't show it. She simply sat back on her knees and exhaled, setting down the fire poker against the wall. Mortar. During the winter, the fire couldn't be lit beneath a mortar surface, as the coldness of the walls of the chimney would contain the smoke for days. The fireplace had to have been installed years after the church was finished.

Sven didn't move. He just stood behind Katherine as she looked up and prayed to the Ceiling God. A lot of people were familiar with him, apparently. She wrapped her arms around her arms beneath the robes she wore.

Her skin- at least, the skin on the cheek that he could see- appeared to be fine, so Sven guessed that she was cold from something other than the temperature.

Despite himself, Sven actually felt sorry for her. She obviously regretted killing that man, but she'd believed that it had had to be done. Having someone else's blood on your hands wasn't like having your own blood on your hands. Your blood feels warm and light. Someone else's feels cold and sticky.

Katherine placed a palm on the ground to help herself rise. She stood up and walked toward the side of the room. Sven stepped in and watched her curiously. She was standing over a flimsy, plastic table with several mixes of cream and packets. There was a mug of coffee on the table that she added a packet of sugar to. She then took the mug and went back to the fireplace. The mug was then set down in front of the fire to heat up.

She then went back to the plastic table and retrieved a cup with a small handle that two fingers could slip through. Katherine picked it up and reached for a second. She glanced at Sven.

He shook his head. He didn't drink coffee.

Katherine left the second cup behind and returned to the fire. She nodded slowly to herself like she was counting how long she had to wait. Soon enough, she took the mug and swished it around in the mug before pouring out a decent amount into the teacup she held.

"Katherine?" Sven asked hesitantly. "Are you okay?"

"I am well, Sven," she answered tersely. She quieted down some. "Thank you for asking. Would you care to join me?"

Sven was already too close to the fire. "I'm fine."

She shrugged. "It's not often I use this," she said, taking a sip of her coffee. She didn't pucker her lips, so the temperature of the cup was good for her. "Today I find myself cold."

"I can imagine," Sven said softly.

Katherine eyed him. "What do you think happened?"

Sven hesitated. "You stabbed that man. You feel ashamed of it, and your body is taking a physical response to your feelings."

"Not about that," Katherine said quickly. "I mean why we had to do that."

"It wasn't my decision," Sven answered. "You guys got afraid and you acted on that fear."

"You believe we were too hasty," Katherine said. She put her cup down next to the fireplace.

"We never even learned his name, as you pointed out. Yeah, you guys were not giving him a chance."

Katherine looked away. "Why do you think a praying mantis eats her husband?"

Sven furrowed his brow. "What?"

"Why does the female mantis eat her mate?" Katherine asked again.

He shrugged. "Because she gets hungry during… reproduction," he finished, choosing his term for sex carefully.

She shook her head. "The female will decapitate her husband because it is her duty to bring his genes to their children. The eating comes when she needs to make sure that she can stay alive for her children."

"Okay." He was pretty sure he could grasp her meaning.

"It is the shepherd's duty to protect his flock from the wolf, but sometimes, it is not the wolf that is the danger. It is the shepherd, who fails to keep them from eating each other's food, who kills them when each tries to go off alone." She looked at him intently. "I don't want any of you to leave. I apologize if I allowed others to make your decision seem less.

"What you did was brave in giving strength to those who needed it. No matter what the others of the flock do, it is the individual who makes his choice. It was not your fault that he had to be killed, however. Please do not hate the female for keeping herself and children alive."

"A man still died in the church…"

Katherine picked up her teacup. "I must keep demons out, so I must not open the doors of God's house to them." She took a long sip. "You may bury him tomorrow, if you wish."

Sven nodded gratefully. "Thank you, Katherine."

She gave him a weak smile before hiding it with her teacup, but it was enough. He didn't wait for her to dismiss him; she clearly needed some time alone, anyway.

After going back to change his clothes and shoes, Sven spent the rest of the day sitting beside the platform, reflecting on what Katherine had said. He didn't sit on the church bench, choosing to sit on the steps to the altar instead. Simon had brought him a piece of bread, offering him some more if he would join him, but Sven had declined.

Could he forgive them? Yes. They hadn't murdered him out of a desire for blood (though Nate had held him back because he had wanted some), but out of fear for their own safety. Sure, they would probably resent him for being in their way and for causing the mess in the first place, but he was used to being by himself anyway. He was usually isolated from the rest of his group.

Even Katherine, who had tried hard to integrate him into their group properly, let him be on his own. That wasn't really her fault. It was his. If the group could kill a man to preserve themselves, then Sven could stay quiet to preserve himself, right?

The dead man's skin had grown quite pale in the hours since his death that morning. It was well into the night now, but Sven had yet to turn in. The demons had quieted down outside, but Katherine was not allowing anyone outside until Brooke could deal with them. The plan was for her, Angus and two others to take their weapons outside and kill any demon they could find. Sven hoped that he could join them on their excursion; the faster the demons were gone, the faster he could bury the stranger.

Sven sighed, rubbing his eyes. Why wasn't he turning in? He wasn't doing anything other than sitting down on the floor in his skin-covering clothes. He needed to be well-rested for when he would go and fight the demons. Why couldn't he just go down to the basement and sleep?

Was it something that Katherine had said? Or was it his own worry that the group would hate him now? Sven had indeed fought against them for the man's life when they had all wanted him out, which would not make him any more popular than he was now.

Praying mantises had women who are husbands. Humans had people who would kill to protect. It seemed such a paradox; killing to protect. Hurting one to favor another. Had he really saved the man by bringing him into the church to be killed? Would he have killed him by saving himself and ignoring the screams from the swamp in the first place?

Sven's eyes gradually closed. He saw images that came unbidden. Rocks that had dusted over long ago, now unsettled by feet that could not miss them. Demons that could end a man's life with the smallest bite.

He saw how one was slowly opening its own eyes. They were white entirely; it looked like this demon had no eyes, just fragments of its own rotten skull visible through its eye sockets. The fingers on its hands curled and twitched, and it took its first breaths of its half-life. Now living only with the insatiable need for blood, it groaned a pleading cry for any living creature to feed it.

Sven imagined that he could understand the thing. It couldn't help itself as it didn't have the capacity to feel anything. Satan had sent it back because he could not care for it, so it fed on anything that moved. It felt _betrayed_. The damnation it had suffered had not been enough.

The whiteness of the thing's eyes found his own eyes, or at least he thought it was looking into his eyes. Its nostrils flared as its groans became growls. With uncontrolled finger movements, it raised a limp hand. The slow, cold hand wrapped around Sven's wrist and tugged slowly.

Sven started with a jolt. This wasn't a dream. This was real!

He let out a cry of pain as the demon pulled. He fell over in the other direction from the demon. Sven broke free from the hand quite easily. The demon's throat made a snarl that rose to its mashing jaws. Sven edged backwards, crawling away from the monster.

His head and shoulders reached an obstacle, preventing him from crawling back further. The demon put one hand on the ground and stood up on wobbly legs. It seemed to adapt quickly, as it walked with its arms extended for him.

Sven gritted his teeth and got to his own feet. He reached into his belt and reached for the knife that he should have had in the morning. It was there this time, and he tightened his grip on it. Sven whipped it own and grabbed it in two hands. He raised it high above his head, both of his thumbs brushing against the wall, ready to plunge the blade through the top of its skull.

It limped forward, basically dragging one leg behind it. The knee was fractured, indicated by the swelling in front of the knee.

The demon's eyes were on him again. Bollocks!

Sven's own eyes widened in fear. Those eyes were not natural! How? Why?

Sven was too transfixed on the whiteness of its eyes to do anything as it drew closer. Both of its hands found his shoulders before he thought to do anything about it. The knife fell out of numb fingers and clattered against the ground with a clang. Sven did not look at it; moving his eyes was too difficult.

His hands were outstretched before him instantly, trying to push away the demon. Sven was quite surprised to see that his shove had sent it tumbling over; the leg had given it such a weak base that any force put onto it could send it down.

Its eyes were no longer on him, and he found himself freed. Jumping into action, Sven reached down and picked up his knife. He slid down on his knees beside the demon and raised his knife.

Whiteness. There was _nothing_ there!

The eyes once again held him frozen. His mind screamed at him to finish it off already, but his hand was not functioning right.

Shaking, a grey hand reached up from the ground. Cold, firm fingers wrapped around Sven's throat. Its hand pulled him closer as he desperately tried to keep his knife in his own hand. His head shook, and a strangled cry escaped from his lips.

There was a flash, and suddenly, the fingers around his throat slackened. The arm of the demon fell down beside him. Blood was pooling around the head that was no longer moving.

Sven saw a hole that ran through both temples of the demon's face. One of its eyes- the one next to the pool of blood- was red due to the hole leaking into the eye. The other was dull.

Sven looked to his right and saw Brooke with a gun in her hands, silencer covering the barrel. She seemed extremely frightened before she shut her eyes in a regretful posture and tucked the gun away. It wasn't until Brooke looked at him that he began moving himself.

He lowered his hand holding the knife, feeling ashamed that he had needed help dealing with a single demon. He hadn't felt so inadequate since the early days.

Sven stood up. "Sorry, Brooke," he said, though he wasn't sure why.

She didn't answer him. She was still looking at the corpse. Brooke's feet scraped across the floor as she moved toward him.

Sven looked away from her. He glanced at the head of the demon. His hand reached out to close its eyelids, but his hand fumbled across its face each time he tried. He finally settled on turning its head so that its cheek was flat against the ground.

"I don't understand," Sven mumbled. "I thought that wasn't a bite…"

"It wasn't…"

Sven looked back at her sharply. "But, earlier… when you said…"

"He wasn't bitten," Brooke said in an eerily quiet voice. "But he still came back."

Sven knelt down and inspected what was left of the demon. The leg was broken, but there was no torn fabric there that would suggest he had been bitten there. Sven lifted both pant legs just to be certain, but still found nothing. The wound on the now dead-again man's arm was the only part of him that had been bleeding before he'd been killed by Katherine. Sven took a hold of that arm and raised it, checking the wound again. It hadn't festered or blackened when the man had died, so the wound was only superficial. Definitely not a bite.

"Maybe he swallowed some infected water?" Sven suggested. "That pond out there wasn't exactly clean."

Brooke didn't look convinced. Sven thought about his theory and saw something that he should have seen before. If a demon bit a person, they died. Bites were caused by teeth, obviously, as Marcus had pointed out during the argument over the wound. If demons were carrying infection everywhere on their bodies, then they were basically walking death. There was nothing special about their teeth, then. Any contact with their skin to a live host's blood would infect them.

But why did only humans become demons when infected? Sven had seen several animals skewered and devoured- squirrels and rabbits, mostly- by demons, but the infection that the demons carried would spread to the animals then. So why did they stay dead when that happened?

Sven came to a conclusion that made sense. Cruel sense, but it could be looked at as logical, as it suited a lot of people's deaths. There was no way so many people as there were demons could have been killed by the demons; humans would have eventually learned how to avoid or stop them after a while. So what about all those who weren't bitten but still stood back up after death?

Sven shut his eyes. What if… what if everyone in the world was already infected? They were just prisons that kept demons caged until they died, and then the demon would escape and take over.

He felt like crying. He'd become a demon no matter how long he lived. Why not just get it over with now?

 _No,_ he thought. _Don't give up. This doesn't change anything. Just keep on living. I don't plan on dying anytime soon. When the time comes… oh, God…_

He opened his eyes, forcing his welling tears to stay where they were behind his eyes. Brooke had no idea that he'd just pondered killing himself. Her face was passive, despite how her hands spasmed.

 _Did she know this was going to happen?_ "Brooke," he began with a dry voice. "What happened?"

Her face scrunched in alarm. That was all the indication he needed. He stood up again and stepped towards her, accusing. "You _knew_ we were all infected! How could you not say anything?" She _had_ seen that Katherine hadn't stabbed him in the head, right? Was that why she was down here with her gun? To finish the dead man off?

Brooke looked at him with an expression of befuddlement. "What? No!" she denied. "What are you talking about?"

Sven searched her face for any clues, but he found nothing. He decided to press forward. "This man wasn't bitten; you said so yourself. So why did a dead man who wasn't bitten try to eat me?"

"How should I know?" Brooke demanded. "Maybe he'd had enough of your attitude and decided to do something about it."

Sven opened his mouth to make a retort, but he stopped himself, realizing that Brooke truly had no idea what he was saying. "Never mind. You just said he wasn't bitten. Why did you say that he was?"

"Because you wouldn't stop arguing with _everyone_ and making the saying the same thing over and over and fucking over again!" She clenched her fists. "Dammit, Sven. You were gonna get yourself killed with him. Is that what you want? How about you show some gratitude to someone who's saved you a dozen times _today_?"

"Is he bitten," Sven breathed, "or not?"

Her face softened before crumpling in sorrow. "No."

"Then what happened?"

"I cut his arm," Brooke said.

Sven started. "What?"

"I cut his arm while you and Peter were yelling at each other," she explained quietly. "I needed to get you guys to stop fighting and just let him leave. I thought we would just kick him out of the church, not kill him."

The wells of tears behind Sven's eyes were starting to overflow.

"Brooke… why?" he asked pleadingly. This was a lie. It had to be.

"I didn't want anyone to die, but we couldn't have taken care of him," she explained, on the verge of tears herself. "He couldn't even walk. I just wanted him gone." Brooke put her hand over her eyes, turned around and rushed away.

"Brooke…" Sven said, reaching out for her, but she was out the door already. He didn't have the strength to follow her. His legs gave out underneath him, and he fell to his knees. The tears that he had resisted now began streaming out steadily.

The knife that he had in his belt seemed so much more heavy now.

* * *

 **Disclaimer: The characters and base concept of this story are from "Walking Dead: Season Three", a completed fanfiction developed by Drexbann15 and TWDGamerKenny'sBro. Likenesses, traits, and background of characters other than Angus, Brooke, Katherine and Sven are created by me, with the exception of Nate, who is a Telltale Games character. Be sure to check out the ending of this tale on Drexbann15's profile.**


	2. To Lie With Sinners

Sven picked up another stone placed at his feet. He fished out a piece of string from his pocket. He was running out of string. Two strands left, not counting the one in his hands. The one in his fingers was around a medium length, which was too short for the rock in his hands. With a careless shrug, he dropped the rock.

His eyes roved for a rock of appropriate size for the string. It was quite difficult to pick out such rocks amongst the millions surrounding the church around him, but he wasn't working alone. Marcus, Micah and Abigail were working with him, searching for rocks to go with their strands. Simon kept a lookout on the roof, ready to warn them should any demons come near and shoot it necessary.

Sven found a pebble that had an irregular shape a short distance away from the others. He bent down to inspect it, noting how familiar it looked. It looked like… well, at the angle he was inspecting it from, it looked like the state of Ohio.

He cocked his head, setting the stone down smoothly so that the angle he looked at it from was perpendicular to the sky, ridges of the top facing north. He knew that he wasn't close to the center of the state, but he figured it would mark the church as the center of the world. At least, to him.

Sven shot a glance toward the swamp. The trees had very few surviving leaves. Winter had not yet started, but the environment was preparing for it. What was this? The second winter since the outbreak? Autumn this year had been especially harsh, and it was the coldest it had been without turning to snow. It was probably late November or early December.

As such, Katherine had put four lucky people on stone gathering duty outside in the cold to look for palm-sized to fist-sized rocks that would act as decorations on the Christmas tree in the lower congregation room. At the base of the tree was all of their supplies, meant to be proverbially and literally unwrapped for a giant feast upon Christmas Day.

Katherine hadn't been completely heartless; she had allowed all four of them three glasses of warmed wine before they'd left to help preserve heat, then had given three of them ear covering hats and one pair of false-fur earmuffs. Abigail stood out with that pink stuff around her head.

Simon hadn't technically been assigned lookout duty, as he was supposed to be collecting firewood. Sven, however, had privately asked him to just go up to the roof with a rifle and keep an eye out. He had volunteered to collect the wood once he was done with rocks. Simon hadn't objected, since he'd been the one that had been in charge of distributing the wine. Conveniently, Micah had lost the bottle after his glass had been filled four times. Simon obviously had found it, as it lay on the roof beside him.

Sven didn't go up there anymore in the early mornings. It hadn't been to avoid extreme weather conditions like razing heat or freezing cold, but it had been to avoid ever hearing people screaming from outside. As long as he didn't know that someone was in danger out there, he wouldn't have to feel guilty about not being able to save them.

Of course, the guilt was still there about the man whom everyone had thought bitten. The feeling had faded after a while, but the memory would always be there, haunting. Why? That was the night he had found out that Sven would end up like him unless someone gave him the courtesy of shooting him in the head.

Most of the others hadn't believed him. Brooke, who had been the one who had created the "bite", didn't have a choice but to continue the act that he had been bitten, or she might face consequences. As such, Peter and the others had scorned him for being crazy. Simon hadn't scorned him, but he had not hidden his doubts about Sven's revelation. Katherine had not openly objected to his theory, instead saying that all men were demons. Sven didn't know whether that was a metaphor for her outlook on life or her genuinely believing him, but it was always bloody difficult to understand her, so he just took it for granted that she didn't believe him.

Curiously, Nate had actually seemed to believe him. Sven wasn't sure what bothered him about that.

It had been over a year since that fateful night. The sun had risen and set over five-hundred times, and the others still resented him for his arguments since then.

They all put on a good show for Katherine, even when she wasn't around, but Sven could see their hostility in the little things. How the other three picking through rocks were all looking in the same area away from him; how Angus would occasionally wake him up by "accident" whenever he was sleeping; how nobody ever seemed to want to talk to him during free time or lunches.

Sven found a rock that seemed innocent enough. He bent down to pick it up. He measured it by how far around it his fingers could reach. When he tried to close his hand around it, his thumb barely reached the inner wrinkle of his pinky finger.

 _Perfect,_ he thought. With the string- the strand in his hand at about six inches- dangling between two fingers, he placed the rock into that hand and held it there with his other thumb as he draped the two fingers with the string over the stone. Maneuvering his wrist around the rock, he soon had the string circling around the rugged surface with two inches to spare. He then dropped the rock while holding on to each end of the string, keeping the rock hanging. He tied a double layer knot like an accordion bill, then shook the string in rapid motions. The rock did not fly out.

Smiling to himself, he attached the string to his waist next to the other three stone ornaments he had made. _Just two more,_ he thought.

He pulled out another strand from his pocket. This one was around the same size as the last string.

A dark liquid splashed against the ground to his right. Rolling his eyes, he looked up at the roof. Simon lifted his shoulders. _My bad,_ the shrug said.

Sven looked back at the stain against the rocks. It seemed a smudge against the entrance to the church, a speck of grime on rocks that would be coated soon with dust.

Sven frowned. The pebble shaped like Ohio was within the borders of the dried puddle. Darkened.

He turned away. There was a small crevice in the ground, big enough for a rounded object to fit into. It looked to have been opened by someone on purpose. Sven bent down, looking into the small hole. It was too dark for him to see anything inside, but the fact that it was dark meant that it was at least three feet deep.

Sven placed his fingers under the top of the crevice and pulled up. The dirt was hard and packed in a cramped density. Someone had literally caked their fingernails to scrape dirt away to make it look like a rock by drawing ridges. Who would do something like that?

Nate. Sven sighed. Whatever was down there, he had a feeling that moving or taking it would get him killed. Only Nate would go digging in the dirt like that, and whatever he felt the need to hide was something Sven would not want to see. What was it? The head of his father? Probably crazy enough for that.

He stood up and ignored the stain and the crevice next to it. He searched for other rocks that were as big as the previous one he had taken. Bollocks. Even with the wine and coverings, it was still freezing cold outside; skin feeling the bite of near-winter winds.

 _I clearly didn't get the better deal in looking for firewood,_ he thought. He'd have kicked at the puddle if he'd thought it was worth it, for the cold had not been predicted. Shivering, he approached the western end of the church. Below the chimney of the roof, the sun could not find him.

Sven himself found something, though. He found a well rounded stone of appropriate size for his string. Using the same method as before, he wrapped it in a neat knot of an accordion bill. The rock did not fall out of its string when he shook it.

Attaching this ornament to his waist, he took out the final strand from his pocket. One more before he had to go look for some firewood. This last bit was a tad smaller than the length of his cubit, which he knew from past experience was around four inches.

A loud tapping sounded out from above him. Sven looked up at the shadowy figure atop it and noticed it pounding against the chimney with the butt end of his rifle. The silhouette pointed out behind Sven.

Sven followed the direction of Simon's figure and saw two demons approaching from the tree line. One was missing an arm that ended in a sharpened and grey bone.

He sighed. He waved off Simon as he raised his rifle to shoot. Sven didn't need help with this; he had his knife this time.

Unlike the ceremonial knife Katherine kept for, well, ceremonies, the knife Sven carried was quite useful in combat. One side of the blade was littered with flamelike edges that were solely for the purpose of cutting. The other side was meant for slicing with its straight edge. The point, of course, was meant for three things; removing pits from peaches, carving his name into the earth, and stabbing the brains of demons that got too close.

Sven allowed the snarling things to draw close before he struck out. In a single motion, one hand guided the knife in a slice through the jaw of one demon before it was embedded in the skull of the one with a single arm cut off. One was rendered dead, the other unable to bite anymore. Both fell.

The dead demon slipped off the blade as it fell, leaving him free to plunge it down and stab the other demon in the back of the head. It gave off a final gurgle before its limbs came to rest.

Sven slowly removed the knife from the demon, trying to make the exit clean as possible so the knife didn't wiggle and get even more filthy than it already was. He noticed that the blade had a slight green tint to the red that was to be expected. Green? Why was this demon's blood discolored?

He'd heard stories before it all began where some people had a bit of excess sulfur in their blood stream and would inhale too much hydrogen when smoking. Their blood, normally blue on the inside, would literally work like copper and turn green. It wasn't as much of a disease as it would appear, to have green blood. Maybe this demon before he had become a demon had been a smoker as well as having had too much sulfur in his blood.

Sven paused. Why had he even bothered caring? Why did he remember such an obscure cause of some strange occurrence? Why couldn't he just have blamed the color on the cold like any normal person would?

He shook his head and wiped his knife's blade on the fabric of the demon's shoulder, careful not to cut the rotten flesh. It was squishy.

Sven stood up and looked at Simon on the roof. The man up there wasn't even bothering to pay attention. That was a tad annoying; why bother putting on such a show of no one would know it had happened?

He put the knife away. As he turned to leave, and idea popped into his head. Sure, it was quite rude to the man that had formerly been alive before becoming a demon, but he couldn't pass up on it. He took one of the rocks on strings off his belt and grabbed the string with two fingers. Taking a quick glance back at the roof to make sure Simon wasn't watching, he dipped the rock onto the wound in the demon's head. The greenish-red substance was still a liquid, but the cold would soon dissolve it. The blood was barely coming out of its head at this point. Still, there was enough to coat a good third of the rock in a colorful variety. The bottom of the rock was already drying.

Sven reattached the now colored ornament to his belt. He glanced at the other demon with the one arm missing, noting that the blood was already dry and part of its skin. If it were warmer, he could have salvaged some red colors for a different rock.

He could have explained the colors of the stones quite easily; blame it on the swamp.

Unfortunately, he would have to go back there to get some firewood. Up until now, other people had gone to collect firewood whenever it was required. He hadn't just asked Simon to go up to the roof because he had wanted a lookout. He hadn't volunteered to remain outside longer because he relished the cold winds. He knew he had to go back and face his own personal demons. Demons that couldn't be stabbed in the head to silence them.

He continued his search for one final rock that would pair well with his string. After around a minute of roving away from the two corpses, he finally found a reasonably round rock that he could wrap a string around. He tied up the accordion bill knot around it and when it held still within the string, he attached it to his waist. He then faced the swamp's direction.

The swamp was not cursed. He accepted that. The swamp did not actually cause the man's death. He accepted that. Still, he had to keep reminding himself that there was nothing wrong with it. Even though it hadn't actually caused any harm, it was still a symbol to him. It represented that mere feet away from God's doorstep, slime and dirt meshed into each other and nobody did anything about it.

"Sven," a burbling voice said from behind him.

Sven wheeled around and saw Simon standing there with a hunting rifle in his hand. His cheeks were flush despite the cold. His left foot couldn't seem to stay still.

 _How much of that bottle did he have?_ Sven thought. _Lucky bastard._

"What're you doing down here?" Sven asked, his hand trailing downwards to block Simon's view of the colored rock.

"We're going to get some firewood," he said in another burbling voice. His finger was on the trigger. Sven couldn't see the safety feature on the rifle.

"You _sure_ you're up for that?" Sven asked. "You might have had a bit too much."

"I'm fine," Simon asserted in a firmer voice than before.

"Look," he said, "I can take care of the wood. Why don't you just go back inside?" Sven took the ornaments off of his waist; all except the discolored one, which he kept hidden by his hip. "Take these with you so your mom thinks that you and I were working together. I'll be inside in a few minutes."

Simon wavered, but was clearly in a very suggestible state. He shrugged, collecting the rocks by their strings in one hand. He held out the rifle, his finger squeezing the trigger. Sven sighed internally; the safety was indeed on. "Fine by me," Simon said. "Take this with you."

Sven accepted the rifle with an outstretched arm, eager to take it away from Simon before he shot somebody. Sven checked the ammunition stocking on the outside of the rifle. There were a pair of spares clipped onto the gun, and counting the bullet inside the rifle already, he had three.

There was no strap for him to sling the gun over his shoulder and carry around on his back, so he had to make do with carrying the barrel and stock with both hands. The weight was familiar in his hands, calloused by years of stocking ammo and bringing the rifle out on supply runs to other areas.

"Thanks," Sven said, giving Simon a smile.

Simon didn't return the gesture, instead just waving feebly before turning and slowly stepping back to the church. He wasn't quite steady on his feet.

Sven noticed the other three rock-pickers were still working, as they had been chatting. Sven suppressed a surge of frustration. If they wanted to distract themselves and stay outside longer, that was fine by him.

Shaking his head, he turned and walked to the swampland. He passed through untrimmed brush, stacks of vines and leaves, and layers upon layers of filth that littered the surface of every object he came across. Sven took special care to avoid the last of them; there was no telling how long his clothes would stink if he slipped and fell in the slime.

It didn't take him long to get to the pond. He had even arrived at the same spot where he had snapped the tree branch off trying to hang onto it, though the limb's former holder had become hollow with bugs that had found a new home inside the hole and had devoured the insides of the tree, where the tree would freeze over with no warmth being provided to the point of death, but was preserved by cold to keep from withering completely.

Sven set the rifle down on its butt end against a tree before stepping forward to the edge of the pond. The murky water looked relatively unchanged from the way he had seen over a year before. The only difference was that he couldn't see the demon that had nearly bitten the stranger that day, so that meant that the water had grown so dirty that he couldn't see anything underwater or the thing had left. Who knew? Maybe that demon had been one of those two that he had just killed.

Thinking of those two demons made him sick. Not sick because of the blood color, but because of how barbaric he had acted just to decorate a rock. He had desecrated a man behind what was necessary just to do something no one else would care about. What had he been thinking? That the others would be impressed with his rock?

Sven pulled the rock off of his belt, fingering the smooth surface of it. The size of the stone was the size of his fist, so his hand holding it couldn't reached all the way around it. He held out his arm over the pond to drop the rock in.

"Hands up, now."

Sven halted instantly. The voice had growled out an order for him to follow, but he was confused. Who was it talking to him? He glanced at where he'd left the rifle. It wasn't there.

 _Maybe this place is cursed after all._

"I said _up_ ," came another harsh growl.

The voice sounded like that of a woman's who was trying very hard to contain herself. Slowly, he raised his hands with his palms open. He did not, however, drop the rock. Sven kept the end of the string pinched between the thumb and index finger of his right hand, and shielded her view of it with his arm. With both arms raised above his head, he rolled his wrists to show that he wasn't holding anything. The string between his fingers wasn't visible to her.

Footsteps warned him of someone approaching rapidly. Sven tensed, waiting for an attack, but none came. Instead of a strike, a single hand roughly roved around his belt, searching for any hidden weapons. His knife was forcibly removed from his belt, but he showed no reaction. The hand continued its search of his waist, before brushing and slapping against his legs. He didn't have any other weapons stashed on his body, so the hand left him alone.

"Can I turn around?" Sven asked bitterly over his shoulder. Why had he put his rifle down in the first place?

"You don't get to ask the questions, here," the voice said.

"Okay," Sven said slowly. "I want to turn around now."

She paused. "Fine. No sudden movements." He heard a click sound out behind him.

Sven turned his arm first so he could obstruct the rock from her line of sight before twisting around on his foot to face her. What he saw was not what he had expected.

Here was a woman with brown hair that reached her shoulders, but only just. Brown hair that matched her eyes, which burned with a fire that seemed to be hateful of anyone and everyone. She wore a black leather jacket that was several sizes too big for her. It even looked like it was a man's jacket for someone like Angus. Her pants were a corresponding black that clung tightly to prevent the cloth form being caught on anything. She had boots that were also a dark black, a strong color to accentuate the rest of her clothes.

She took a wary step back as he fully turned around, fearing that he had secretly been armed and had been about to spring at her. She wasn't exactly wrong.

"What are you doing here?" she hissed through gritted teeth.

"I live here," Sven answered. "Not in the swamp, but right outside of it."

She nodded, seemingly trying to calculate something in her head. Her cheeks were pale, like the rest of the skin that he could see. Sven wasn't sure if it was because of the cold or if it was her natural complexion.

"Why live here? It doesn't seem safe here."

"Believe me, it's not by choice that I'm here."

"Who made that choice, then?" the woman asked, her eyes narrowing.

Damn, she was quite perceptive. He didn't see any harm in telling her the name of his group leader, since she already knew he was in a group. She didn't seem surprised to know that he wasn't alone, and didn't show any fear over it. Outwardly, at least. Sven didn't share how many were in his group.

The rifle lowered, but was still comfortably pointed at him. She could raise it and shoot him in a heartbeat.

"Where are you staying?" she asked.

Sven paused. Sure, he didn't actually think so, given her attire that would indicate that she was a person who tended to stay out of sight rather than engage in confrontation, but she might have had a group herself that could attack the church if he said where they were staying. Perhaps he'd already said too much, and she was only trying to confirm her suspicions.

"Where are you staying?" she repeated in a slightly aggravated tone, the rifle raised to point at him again.

"Me and my people are holed up in the church outside of the swamp," Sven said in a low tone. "We got a pretty good set-up and have gotten pretty good at protecting ourselves."

If she saw the threat in those words, she didn't react to it. "There's a church outside the swamp?"

"Hey, I'm not the one who built the church, lady. I just sleep there now."

She grumbled something under her breath that he couldn't quite understand. Her eyes darkened to a dangerous level. Something about her demeanor bespoke of an intensity that was something to be respected and feared, but she didn't seem like the kind of person who would go on a killing spree of humans or demons to take out their anger. That didn't mean she wouldn't kill him to keep herself safe.

Then, unexpectedly, her features softened. "Are you… okay? With your group?"

 _Strange question._ "Good enough."

"So… they won't mind if I keep this?"

Sven shook his head.

Her face scrunched again. "Chin down, hold your breath," she ordered. One of her hands squeezed the under barrel of the gun tightly.

 _She's not going to kill me,_ Sven realized. Regardless, he couldn't lose that gun. A missing weapon wasn't as hard to ignore as Sven was to the rest of the group. He complied with her command, readying his improvised ornament.

She approached, prepared to use the back of the rifle to strike him, perhaps to knock him into the water. He rolled his wrist one last time, making sure that he could fight.

When she came within a foot of him, he swung his arm around, hitting her with the rock on the side of the head. She grunted, falling over. A gunshot rang out as she hit the ground.

Sven pounced, lunging for her. She raised the gun for him, but obviously wasn't familiar enough with the firearm to know that she could only get one shot out of it. She squeezed the trigger uselessly, and Sven saw fear splash across her face. It was gone in a second.

Sven reached for the gun, but she rolled out of the way. She got to her knees, drawing the knife she had taken from him and tossing the gun behind her. That made Sven pause long enough for her to stand.

When he recovered, she feinted forward with a false lunge. He didn't flinch. Time was on his side; he just had to wait for his group to arrive to help deal with her. They had heard the gunshot, right?

She seemed to realize this as well, and sprung forward to actually attack. Sven warded her back with a quick sweep of his rock on a string. What was it that this weapon was called back when it was commonly used? A bola? That sounded right.

The brown-haired woman attacked again, using both of her hands in a series of slices and jabs. Sven stepped back from the onslaught, his foot hearing the edge of the pond. He used his "bola" to force her back to gain some ground himself, but instead of dodging the blow, she blocked it.

She raised her arm and hit the rock with her elbow with a grunt. She grunted again as she lunged forward in a thrust. With a yelp, Sven twisted to the side, allowing the knife to pass him. He stepped into her, shoving her aside.

Sven rolled forward as the woman stumbled into the brush. He came out of his roll on his knees and found his rifle on the ground before him. He grabbed it with one hand and plucked out a bullet casing from the side with his other. In a quick motion of removing the trigger's casing and twirling the gun around to fit the bullet inside as he turned around, he aimed the gun at the woman.

Only she wasn't there.

The black-maned, brown-haired woman was nowhere to be seen. Sven quickly scanned his surroundings. He didn't know how well a figure of black could hide in a swamp, but he supposed it couldn't be too hard as long as she hadn't run off. At least she wasn't wearing all brown or camouflage.

A rustling noise came from behind him. Sven whipped his arm around, facing his attacker.

It was Abigail behind him, her own gun drawn and pointed at him. "Put that down, now!"

Sven lowered the gun, waiting for her to do the same. It wasn't until Micah and Marcus appeared behind her that she did. They had their own weapons drawn as well, but neither raised them at him.

Sven looked around, searching for any sign of her. She'd probably fled, seeing no point in continuing the fight. Sven wished she'd learn some manners before she met anybody else.

"What the hell was that?" Micah demanded.

Sven huffed out a held in breath, shoulders sagging as he spoke. "I saw a turkey."

"A turkey?" Abigail repeated incredulously. "In a fucking swamp?"

"Yeah, in a swamp. I'd ask it why it was there if I could find it."

"Where'd the turkey go?" Marcus asked.

"It flew off."

"Flew where?"

Abigail waved Marcus off. "Why'd you shoot?"

"I thought it'd make a nice dinner, Abigail," Sven responded irritably. "Pretty sure meat would be a nice change from everyday peaches. What do you think?"

"I think you're a fucking idiot," she said, stepping closer. "Remember what happened last time you decided to take matters into your own hands?"

"Remember the last time you did anything?" Sven countered. "I sure as hell don't."

Abigail fumed. She averted her gaze, nothing to retort. "Every demon out there heard you with your stupid turkey. We're going back inside."

Marcus left with a stooped posture. He pushed his way back through the vines and mumbled about his desire to eat a turkey. Micah followed him. "Come on."

"I need to get some firewood, first," Sven said. "If you want to help…"

Micah stopped, then turned to fade him. "I don't care if I freeze tonight. I'm not standing another minute out here." He left, disappearing in the brush in less than five seconds. Sven could still hear his footsteps over twigs and scattered rocks.

Abigail looked back at him, teeth gritted. "Enjoy the cold. You'll be sleeping out here before too long."

"Go back inside, Abby," Sven warned. "I think they want you away from me."

"I think they want you gone." She turned away and walked out through the brush. "Have fun with your turkey," Abigail called back as she moved.

Sven sighed, his breath puffing out before him visibly. Why did always have to antagonize his group? It never occurred to him that he might be wrong. He had argued over an imaginary turkey that had turned into an argument about nobody else doing anything around there. How long would it take for him to get himself strangled by someone else in his group.

He sighed again. He steadied his rifle, idly flicking the safety on and off. Soon after, the three people that had just left shouted back at him. "Don't take too long!" It sounded like Micah. "We're not keeping the door open, and we're locking it behind us. Don't expect us to stick around the door."

Sven didn't bother shouting back; it wasn't like they wanted him to, and he didn't trust himself not to get into another argument.

"You lied to them," a voice softly whispered.

Leading with his rifle, Sven whipped around and aimed the gun at the forehead of the speaker. It was the woman with the black clothing again, standing with most of her body hidden behind a thick tree. What was she still doing here?

She hesitated, looking as if she was going to put her hands up, but deciding not to. Sven slowly lowered his own rifle, watching her hands closely. She might've used his rifle before to threaten him and then attacked him with his knife, but that didn't mean she didn't have her own weapon. She could easily reach behind her back and grab a gun he couldn't see.

Sven cocked his head. "What are you doing?"

She echoed his question back to him. "What are _you_ doing?"

Sven kept his eyes on her hands. Her fingers quivered. Frostbite?

"I'm getting some firewood…" he mumbled. She was staring at him in such a way that made his own words seem inconsequential. "I was letting you go."

"Why?"

"I don't know. I don't think you'd taste very good."

She shuddered. "I've met some people who'd disagree with you," she said.

"Lady, listen, I don't know-"

"Lilly," she interrupted. Sven frowned. "My name. It's Lilly."

"Lilly," Sven began. "Listen, I don't need to know what you've seen. I have enough nightmares as it is. Why don't you just get on out of here and we'll forget we ever saw each other?"

Lilly, if that was her real name, stepped out from behind the tree. "Why are you letting me go?

I could be a part of a group."

"You don't strike me as a person who takes orders well, and you're obviously trying to hide from people. No offense."

"None taken."

"Well," Sven stammered. "I hope you don't come back here and try to kill me, but that's a chance I'm taking."

She looked away. "You're… a good man," she said slowly.

"You don't know that," Sven replied, waving his hand dismissively.

"I think so."

"You let me leave. You could have easily told your friends-"

"They're not my friends."

"- that there was a prowler in the woods that had just tried to kill you-"

"You were going to let me live in the first place."

"- instead of lying about a turkey."

"So you were listening," Sven said.

She studied him with calmness, not wariness. Was she dismissing him as a threat or just putting on an act?

"Well," she finally said, "I think you're a good man. Either that or pretty stupid."

"I could be a rapist," he pointed out. "And the only reason I didn't tell anyone about you was because I intended to track you down alone and do whatever I wanted with you without anyone knowing."

"Definitely not stupid," Lilly muttered.

A silence fell over them. Sven wasn't sure what to make of her; one minute she was in his face with a gun, the next she was pleasantly chatting with him.

"You're probably not a rapist." She then spoke seemingly to herself. "I haven't met too many good people."

"Come on," Sven prodded. "I can't be the first guy who's ever shown you any kindness." Right?

Her face darkened. "The last man who showed me any kindness crushed my dad's head with a salt lick."

Sven started visibly. "Really?"

"Well, he didn't do anything to stop it from happening. He just-" She broke off. "Well, I'm pretty sure he knew how I felt when I killed his girlfriend."

Sven shut his eyes, feeling quite uncomfortable. She realized her mistake. "I didn't kill her because of him," Lilly said quickly. "I did it because she was selling us out to-"

"Lilly," Sven interrupted, looking at her. "Like I said, your past is your business. I don't need to know everything about you. It's probably best if I know as little as possible."

"Fair enough." She held out her hands apologetically. "Do you mind if, um… What's your name?"

"Sven. I thought you were listening to our conversation."

"They never said your name," she added quietly. "Do you mind if I help you with your firewood?"

Sven opened his mouth to say that he could handle it on his own, but something in her expression, a pleading, desperation; he couldn't bring himself to do so. He nodded slowly. "If they come back, you'll have to run."

"Got it." She approached him, extending an arm. "Pleasure to meet you."

Sven inspected her outstretched arm. He didn't see any concealed weapons, but that would be the point of concealing them. He carefully took her hand in his own. "Pleasure's all mine."

She flinched slightly at his contact, even though she'd been the one who'd asked for the gesture. Their hands only shook once. Her hand was just the same temperature as his.

"Okay," Lilly said. "Any idea where we could look for firewood?"

"I don't know," Sven joked, his breath making a puff in front of him. "Maybe in a swamp with plenty of trees."

"I mean specifically, any spot you can think of?"

"Anywhere away from the pond." He pointed at the water. "Need dry wood. Hopefully something remotely clean, too."

"Sure thing. Maybe we can go around the pond to the south? There could be something back there."

"I don't want to go too far." His breath puffed in front of him again, this time almost entirely white in hue.

Lilly huffed. "Then we won't."

Sven raised an eyebrow at that. Her bluntness belied her previous willingness to share her past.

Perhaps noticing their proximity, Lilly stepped past his right shoulder. As she moved past him, Sven took the opportunity to check out the back of her waistband. She didn't have a gun hidden there. There was, however, a pin that was used to keep her top attached to her pants. She was taking a lot of precautions to make sure she wasn't seen by anyone. He imagined that it would work better at night.

He looked back up at her face. She was staring at him. "You're not _actually_ a rapist, are you?"

"Me? No," Sven denied. "I can't speak for everyone else, though."

Her face fell. Sven didn't know why. Was she _disappointed_ that he wasn't a rapist?

Lilly shrugged, then turned around and picked open a pair of hanging vines before stepping through them. She didn't hesitate to move away; she expected him to follow.

Even though he probably should have just turned and walked in the other direction, even though everything set off alarm bells in his head in the way this woman carried herself, he walked through the vines to get after her.

Sven found her rubbing against the bark of a thin, willowy tree that had few branches. It looked like it would be pretty easy to climb, if the need were to the arise. It had short outcroppings that might've once been branches to the willow tree, but existed no longer. He hoped that they had merely been blown off by the wind as opposed to having been pulled off; whoever had done so had chosen a pretty bad tree and wouldn't get too much off of the branches, which would be too thin to be of use. The upper crown, however…

Lilly took her hand off of the bark. "It's dry enough to use as firewood. Not sure how we can get the wood, though. There isn't much else around here but vines, but someone didn't want to go too far."

"There might be a way." Sven gestured to the crown of the tree. "That stuff looks kind of flimsy. If we can get you up there, you could probably force it down."

"Alright," Lilly said. "Can I have a boost?"

The tree reached up about nine feet until it bent over itself at a near thirty degree angle. He could boost her up that high, or at least high enough for her to sling her leg up and step on one of the handholds. That, however, wasn't what he was considering.

It was that he was going to help her up when she had just tried to rob him less than five minutes before.

Still, he wasn't going to verbally raise his concerns. The fact of the matter was, he'd much rather have some company out in the cold. Even if they were just collecting firewood, he'd still like to be with somebody who didn't hate him. Or however Nate felt toward him.

Sven shivered. What was his relationship with Nate? Salutary neglect? Mutual ignorance? A one-sided love affair?

He grunted, setting himself at the base of the trunk. His shoulder prepared to hold her, he bent forward. It then occurred to him that she might attack him in his position of vulnerability.

She didn't. Lilly merely stepped forward and placed one foot on the small of his back. Sven grunted again, struggling beneath her weight. She gingerly reached up and placed her other foot on top of his shoulder. Pulling herself to the crown, she removed one foot from his back and wrapped it around the bent portion. Sven raised and eyebrow; whoever she was, she was quite flexible.

Lilly had both of her knees around the tree, hugging the tangled wood with her body. Heaving, she let go with her arms and merely hung upside-down before sitting up with a bolt and twisting around the crown of the tree and getting on top of it.

Lilly puffed out a breath which, in turn, became a puff of white. With both hands to steady herself, she took her knees off the tree and got her feet underneath her. She didn't stand, but she crouched upon her spot up there. She walked up the distance until the tree beneath her began shaking. Her arms held out to her sides, she shifted her weight forward to balance herself in her crouch.

She didn't bother in using her hands to try and remove any section of the tree. She stomped on a bit of the tree that was crooked. It was a good place to start.

After a few stomps to the wood, Lilly made the tree begin shaking at it. When it began shaking at a moderate speed, she dropped off the tree. Sven started when she fell and caught the wood on her way down. Her weight proved too much for that section of the tree, and the crown snapped off the rest of the bark.

Lilly fell didn't fall too far before she landed on the ground. She hit feet first, but barely; she toppled backwards once her heels hit the ground. Sven stepped forward hastily when she didn't rise, checking on her. She seemed dazed for a brief moment before she shrugged- a strange motion considering that she was laying down- and pushed herself back up. She glanced at him. "What?"

He stepped back hesitantly. "That was quite a wipeout."

"I know how to land," Lilly said.

"Oh yeah?" Sven asked. "From where?"

"Ex-military."

 _Really? That where you learned how to jump off of trees?_ "Nice. Learn how to cut wood?"

She smiled. "You know, that's the _one_ thing they didn't teach me?"

He sighed. "Come here," he said, walking over to the large stick that had once been a tree's crown. He held an arm out to his side for balance as he stepped onto the center of the wood. Once he got both feet on it, he beckoned for her to go to one end of the stick. "See if you can lift that up to me."

She furrowed her brow, but didn't question him. Straining to lift both the wood and him, she slowly heaved the stick up to his outstretched arm. Within a few seconds, he had his hand around the stick- his palm covered it entirely- and he pulled it in toward himself while pressing all of his weight onto the center of it.

The wood beneath him began to crackle and protest as he pulled the end of the stick higher and closer to him. Lilly, taking the initiative, helped push the end toward him. The large stick broke into two pieces once the end was to his chest.

One of his feet was no longer on the wood, instead planted on the ground. Sven stepped off the wood entirely, lifting one piece into the air and held it to himself. It wasn't too heavy, but it's length was still hard to get his arms around.

Satisfied, he set the wood back down. This was enough to last a week if Katherine didn't burn too much. And certainly not in her office. She could light it if she wanted to during the warmer seasons, but not when it was cold out, or she'd get the smoke caught in her walls. There were other fireplaces, however.

"Okay," Sven proclaimed. "This should be enough for me. I think I can carry both back with me."

Lilly nodded. "Sure." She paused. "Do you think I can take some with me?"

Sven winced. "Hey, um… I really need to go back inside, and, well-"

"Alright," she interrupted bitterly. "It's okay. I saw that they don't like you very much, and you need to do what you need to do to get back on their good side."

"I'm sorry," Sven said. "I want to stay and help get you some, but I can't be out here any longer."

"Sure, sure," Lilly said back. "Go on back with your wood." She reached into her pocket. She pulled out the knife, gripping it tightly at the bottom of blade instead of by the hilt. She pointed the hilt out to him.

Sven really felt bad about taking all of the wood that they had gotten together. As far as he knew, she didn't have any shelter from the cold like he had, but he needed to bring in a lot of wood, and soon; he'd already spent a suspicious amount of time outside.

He looked away. "Keep it."

"You sure?" Lilly asked, surprised.

He looked back at her. "Yeah. They want this so much that they won't be paying much attention to weapon counts. Probably won't even miss it."

She idly fingered the grip of the knife with her thumb before placing it back into her pocket. "Thanks."

"Don't mention it," Sven said awkwardly. How was he supposed to say goodbye? "You gonna be okay out here?"

"Yeah," Lilly answered. "I've got enough food to last a while. I think it'll rain tonight, though."

Sven looked down. "Well, the swamp could provide some protection from the rain." He racked his brain, trying to think of something helpful. "The lake is a day's walk to the east. Highway's down there," he said, pointing down south. "You might be able to find somewhere to stay down there."

"That's where I came from," Lilly said. "There's a boathouse down there near a water resort with a bunch of supplies that I found."

"You found a boat?" Sven queried.

"Yes."

"And you didn't take it out on the water?"

Her face darkened. "I never liked going out on the water. It's a bad plan."

Sven raised an eyebrow. She said it with such anger… What was her problem with boats?

"Alright, fair enough. You staying down there?"

"Not really," Lilly said. "I tend to move around a lot."

"That's fine," Sven remarked. "Okay. Well… thanks, I guess."

She looked down. "No problem."

Sven didn't say anything else. What else was there to say? He shuffled slightly as he bent over and picked up one of the branches and stood back up. Lilly stepped over to the other piece and lifted it up for him. She grunted as she placed it on top of the other stick in his arms.

"Thanks," he repeated.

"You're welcome."

He opened his mouth to say something else, but found nothing else to say. Turning around, he walked forward back into the brush. He stopped, feeling a bit uncomfortable.

He looked back at her. She hadn't moved much. "Hey," he called out, turning around to face her. She looked up at him. "Thank you," he said for the third time. There was a different meaning to his words this time.

She nodded slowly, understanding. "Stay safe," Lilly said. "Please."

He smiled, then turned around again and left her behind. She didn't say anything and he didn't turn back.

Maybe he could forget what it was like to meet a good person so he wouldn't feel so guilty about not doing more to help them. What was wrong with him? She had given him a week's worth of wood in exchange for what? A knife? That wouldn't keep her warm tonight, nor would it protect her from the rain, if it were to rain like she had predicted.

He went to where he'd left his rifle and picked it up, placing it on top of the two wood pieces. He couldn't find the ornament he'd made earlier, though. That was fine with him; it would only have been a reminder about how sick in the head he'd been in treating demons who had no control over themselves. They had at least been people _once_.

It didn't take him long to exit the swamp. When he did, he found a demon caught in some brush on his right. Sven ignored it, just walking up to the open doors of the church. _Open? Who left them open?_

He hurried his pace, trying to both get out of the cold and see what was happening inside. He quickly walked up the steps and got inside, immediately feeling the difference in the air. He set the wood and gun down on the ground and turned to shut the doors. The lock wasn't frozen over, so he didn't fear it giving him frostbite. It clicked once when he engaged it.

Sven turned around and saw a congregation around the altar out front. Brooke, Peter, Katherine, and the others who had been outside with him before were in attendance. Angus was not there, and he didn't see Nate, thankfully, but he knew that whatever they were gathered downstairs for instead of in a heated area had to be for a bad situation.

He took in a breath. This had _not_ gone well for him last time. He didn't know if they were all talking about him, but since the door was left open, he couldn't imagine that Abigail had gone straight to Katherine in such an emergency.

He could only hope.

Sven walked forward to join whatever it was they were huddled for. Katherine was shouting. For once, she sounded like a normal person would.

"Idiot!" That was the first word he could make out. The second was "Get", and the third was "Up".

 _Okay, so this isn't about me,_ Sven thought. He stepped into the congregation beside Peter. That put Katherine directly opposite to him and Julia on his right.

Peter had lost much of his weight in the time since the summer. He had also accumulated a new scar that took the place of his birthmark. Both were the result of him going on supply runs with Nate and Angus. Sven wasn't sure what had caused this noticeable blemish on the man's face, but he hoped it wasn't because of Nate that this had happened.

Julia, like everyone else, had skin covering clothes. The clothes failed to cover up, however, the natural curves of her body. If not for fear of Katherine's punishment, he suspected that half of the others would have taken more than a glancing interest. Sven himself was not among those who would try; she had been against him in the matter of the stranger everyone else had believed bitten. To him, it was as simple as that.

And, of course, he'd already learned from his mistakes.

She kept her black hair long below her shoulders; a direct contrast to Abigail. Her almond eyes were kept to slits.

He noticed that not only was Katherine directly across from him, but her son was as well. The only difference in their positioning was that Katherine was awake.

"Get up!" she yelled at Simon. "You fool boy, get up!"

Her speaking degraded into some nonsense about how his sleeping was a disgrace and how his drooling was refusal to answer was a worse travesty that Judas's actions. Was she consciously choosing to talk like this? She knew no sane person spoke like that, right? She could hear how she sounded-

Her eyes fell upon him as she scanned the surrounding party. He flinched.

 _She doesn't know,_ he reminded himself. Even now, two years of living with her, he still had to remind himself that she couldn't know. If she did, she would have already killed him.

Simon stirred slightly, grumbling for some peace and quiet.

Katherine finished her angry leering at everyone else and returned her attention to Simon. Her face was nearly as flush as his. Sven didn't see the wine, but he could certainly smell it. And… maybe something else in the air. Something that smelled like…

Sven felt a chill. _Oh, no_ …

With a sinking feeling in his stomach, he looked out to where the Christmas tree was. Or, where it used to be.

What was left was just black with soot and ash. The green leaves now dead, the bark once full of water and cultivated now a crumbling mess. The supplies they had all packed at the base of the tree… so long before the real Christmas would even start. It wasn't even December, so far as he could tell. Now, all of the food was just a wreck.

Sven suppressed a curse by biting his lip and shaking his head. He should have known that Simon couldn't be trusted to walk himself back inside. How the hell had he even started the fire?

Katherine's red face began to return to normal, fading a little bit. Slowly raising her hand to wipe away a stray lock of hair from her face, she angled her chin to make the hand hide her whole face. When the hand went down, the redness was gone.

"Due to unforeseen circumstances," Katherine announced, "it appears that the day of our Savior is in danger of failure." She raised both of her arms. "We no longer have any supplies to which we may save ourselves, a gift from our Savior to save ourselves."

Sven sighed loudly.

Katherine ignored him. "Tomorrow, by the coming of dawn, we must search for more."

Some of the others groaned at this, so Sven guessed that she had something that was bad.

"Have faith, please. It is not our time to give up. By tomorrow, we will go to the rising sun to find our food."

 _Rising sun?_ Sven thought. _She can't possibly mean Las Vegas, right? We're in bloody Ohio_.

"Why are we the ones getting punished for this?" Brooke asked. "This was your son's fault."

"Peace, Brooke. This is not a punishment," Katherine reasoned. "This will merely be a test to see what we may achieve together."

"So where should we go?" Sven asked.

"To the waterfront, and may we find our salvation."

 _East? Lilly! She's out there!_

Just as Sven was about to voice his objections, Brooke spoke again. "This _is_ a punishment."

Peter stepped out towards her, trying to calm her down. "Brooke, it's fine," Peter said. "We'll find something else tomorrow."

"I don't see why any of us should go out there," Brooke continued. "Your son obviously can't be trusted."

With a shout, Katherine stepped forward and smacked Brooke across her face. She fell to the ground, landing right next to the unconscious Simon. Crying out her name, Peter jumped and knelt down beside Brooke, trying to help her up. Brooke sat up against Peter, cupping her right cheek. Peter cradled her as she looked up at Katherine in shock.

Sven hadn't heard any impact from the smack. Matter of fact, it looked like there was some blood leaking out from under her palm and getting onto her sleeve.

He looked at Katherine and he saw her still angered and red in the face. What was most surprising, however, was that she held the ceremonial knife- now red on the blade- in her hand.

Sven's eyes widened. She had just tried to kill Brooke. If not for how bad that knife was at cutting, she might have succeeded. Brooke realized this too, and she cowered down, trying to hide herself behind Peter.

Katherine exhaled, then her anger turned to shock. She stepped back, not processing what had just happened. Her hand went limp, but she didn't drop the knife. Some of the blood on it dropped down to the floor. She saw the droplets and she jumped back from the redness.

Simon stirred again.

Katherine turned her head away. "Sven, come upstairs in a minute, please. I would like to speak with you."

Sven cursed silently. Now? What did she want with him now? He hadn't done anything this time; this one wasn't his fault.

Katherine walked to the stairwell and opened the door. It was loud against the silence of everyone else in the group. She disappeared and the door shut behind her.

Peter helped Brooke to her feet, practically dragging her up. He steadied her when she shook, and then carted her over to a church bench. She didn't sit down on her own, soPeter had to physically sit her down. There was a single moment where Sven remembered doing that to the man who'd entered the church alive and left a dead demon.

Nobody else seemed inclined to move much. Feeling sorry for both himself and Simon, Sven left everyone else behind. He didn't try to help Simon as he left. As far as he was concerned, helping Simon might alienate him more from the group than his own ignorance did. And his own ignorance had certainly alienated him enough.

He walked up the stairs to the appropriate floor and exited the stairwell into the hallway that held Katherine's office. As always, he marveled at how the hallway was still perfectly preserved and somehow the paint had not faded despite two years of low upkeep. Green, except for two doors on either side. Oner door led to a restroom, the other led to an office occupied by Katherine, distinguished by a silver plate that held the title-

Someone had scratched out the "Reverend" on the plate and carved a new appellation into the wood above the plate. The new title read "Mother Katherine." _When did that happen?_

Sven hesitated at the door. The group hadn't exactly improved in its morality (maybe that was just his opinion in not seeing any actions and increasing bitterness in others) since the execution of the stranger, and with the diminishing morality, such had flown with sanity. At least, with Nate. The others hadn't truly lost their minds, but Katherine believing herself to be some sort of savior?

He reluctantly grabbed the knob and pushed into the hole. As long as he was able to get them to stay clear of whatever boathouse Lilly was staying at, maybe he wouldn't have to truly find out the group's current state of sanity.

He found Katherine sitting at her desk. The fireplace wasn't lit, nor were any of the drinks or powders on the table in the corner. All of them were… used to be... next to the Christmas tree.

He noticed something that he didn't back downstairs. She actually appeared to have some gray hairs on the fringes. Where had that color been during her shouting?

Katherine held her cheeks in her hands. She wasn't looking down, but she wasn't looking at him either. "Oh, dear Lord, why can't we just stop everything?"

Sven stepped forward and pulled out a chair from the other side of the desk. Before the world ended, this chair would have been used by misbehaving children, adults looking to contribute, and traveling people who would work with the church. He sat down in it, scraping it across the floor as he moved closer to the desk. "We can," he joked. "It's called getting drunk."

"Please, do not hate my son. It is just his mistake-"

"I know, I know," Sven said. "People make mistakes." He paused, edging her further.

Katherine picked up her head. Her hands lowered to the desk. The knife wasn't in either one of them, but two of the fingers of her left hand were shaded red, texturized to the lines and cracks of the skin.

"Sven, I don't know how to deal with children. Even when they're old enough to know better, they just don't know. I wish someone else in the church knew what I am going through."

Sven said nothing. He didn't feel cold anymore.

He had given her an opening to give her feelings on what had just happened with Brooke. Why hadn't she said anything over it?

Katherine shook her head, then reached over to her left and opened up a drawer on her desk. Sven saw her extract a large, rolled-up piece of paper and placed it on the center of the desk. She unrolled it before him, and he saw that it was a layered map of their district of Ohio. The church itself was in the eastern part Henry County.

"If we're going to look for supplies, I think we'll have soffice. Aatherine'priate floor and exfitedthe best luck in Sandusky," Katherine said, pointing at the county immediately to the east of Henry. It bordered the Great Lake that cut into Ohio. "If there's nothing there, we could work our way through to Loraln County. Might be a few places we can search and… well, pray we find something."

Sven inspected Sandusky County. If Lilly really was by the waterfront, she'd likely be in Sandusky Count; from there to the swamp had to be around half a day's drive with blocked roads in mind, and she'd have to pass through another county to get there. Sven furrowed his brow. If she had supplies, and she was trying to stay hidden from other people, then why had she gone so far from her camp? And if she had a vehicle to drive in, why had she chosen to go into the swamp in the first place if she could have just driven away?

"What do you think?" Katherine asked.

Sven internally thanked God that he could understand her. "I think it might rain tonight," Sven said, recalling what Lilly had said. "If we're gonna go that far, we'll need to drive."

"Nathaniel keeps his car on the highway."

"Nathaniel?" Sven asked.

"He's slept in the same room as us for the past year," she said flatly.

"I didn't realize his name was Nathaniel. He told us when we met him that his name was Nate."

"It is two names for one person. Living things have multiple names."

"Right…" Sven said, chewing on his lip. "Well, if you want to drive out there, the highway can probably get us all the way to the water front, assuming that it's open." He glanced at her sidelong. "Why are you asking me?"

She didn't look up at him, instead moving her face closer to the paper to inspect it better. "You spend a lot of time outside."

"Yeah, but Angus is the one who goes out to get food. _Nathaniel_ too."

She still didn't look up at him. "It's not just that."

"Then what is it?"

Katherine, tiredly and apprehensively, finally looked up at him. "We lost a _lot_ of food to Hell's weapons."

"I know," Sven said. "That's why we're going out tomorrow to get some food."

"Sven, that was enough food to last two weeks that we lost. Now, we do not even have enough to feed everyone tonight."

Sven's eyes widened. He hadn't really paid too much attention to their food count- he wasn't in charge of it, so there was no reason to bother- but he hadn't ever thought about what it would take to feed everyone at once. "You mean…"

Katherine shook her head slowly. "I cannot just send Angus and Nathaniel out there with a truck and hope that they find something. If they come up short, we starve tomorrow.

"Everyone must help. We obviously cannot leave the house of the Lord to the hands of the demons, but almost everyone is needed. We will have two parties leave on different paths and pray that we all find enough.

"I will go with one group to the east and hope to find a gift from our Savior on the shore. Simon will be coming with me, as well as a few others that I will select tonight at dinner, for whoever may eat. It'll be just like fasting for a few hours, but my sacrifice won't be enough."

"And you want me to give up my food too," Sven guessed.

Katherine looked uncomfortable. "It would be very noble of you to sacrifice for others in need. If you want, you can choose what your role will be tomorrow. You can be the one to remain behind to guard the church if that is what you wish. Or you may join Simon and me on our journey east to the shore. Or, if not, you can go with the group to Loraln and see if you can find anything."

Sven leaned back in his chair. This was the longest he had been able to follow any conversation with Katherine. What did he want to do?

He could stay behind at the church and just lie around. Maybe he'd run into Lilly again and he could properly thank her for her help. Though she might be gone by then, off to the lake or wherever she wanted to go. She had to have had a vehicle of some sort if she was staying at a boathouse on the shore.

Maybe she had been lying about the boathouse. Honestly, why wouldn't any sane person just hop on and ride away if they'd found a boat? If she'd been camping at the lake, then why cross two county borders and head into a swamp?

No. Just in case she had been telling the truth about where she was, he would have to go with the group to Sandusky and keep them from finding her. If that meant giving up his food for the night, then so be it.

"I'll go with you tomorrow, but Nate's gonna have to get the truck," Sven announced. "Do we have anything for everyone else? One pickup truck can't hold more than six people. Five, if Angus is one of them."

"Angus will be going to Loraln with the others I choose. Nate will be coming with us."

 _Great,_ he thought. Now he'd have to be in the same place as Nate for even longer than he wanted. He should have asked which way Nate would be going first.

"So how is Angus going to get down there?"

"I'm hoping to find a working car down on the highway. Hopefully, there'll be one and we can use it."

"And if there isn't?" Sven asked.

"We have not been abandoned," she asserted. "Our prayers will be answered."

"Alright." Sven was happy to finally have a real conversation with Katherine, instead of her just rambling. He guessed that perhaps the real danger to all of their survival had made her talk like this. "I'll give you my food for the night. How many people will be able to eat?"

"With what we have? Just eight of us. You and I will be fasting; Simon too. Maybe it will teach that boy a lesson," Katherine said sharply. "I'll need two more volunteers, though."

"Well, I'm sure we'll be able to find something tomorrow," Sven shared.

She circled an area of Loraln county with her nail, making an indented ring that popped back up when her finger left the table. "So am I."

* * *

A the glass was warm when Sven felt it against his cheek. His eyes stayed shut as he felt vibrations of the car driving over rocks. It took him a few seconds to finally open his eyelids.

He yawned, sitting up straight and taking his face off the glass. It was still bright outside. The wind would still bring a chill to whoever stepped outside, but it wasn't nearly as cold as the day before. As such, the car's heater wasn't turned on too high, nor did he have to wear an extra layer of clothing.

The previous night, Katherine had made her selection. Two others had volunteered to surrender their food for the others; Peter and Nate. Nate's surrender of the food had surprised Sven, as Nate had not been given the option to choose which destination to go to. Peter, however, had chosen where to go, and he had elected to go with Katherine. Sven guessed that it was probably to be with Brooke.

Katherine's group had filled, so Angus and the others had been instructed to go to a specific location in Loraln county and look for supplies while Julia remained behind in the church to guard it against sinners and demons.

In order to get there, they had needed to take a car and, amazingly, they had found not one, but two vehicles that they had been able to take. One was a large, red SUV that had required some maintenance under the hood to get started, though Sven had been able to get it working. The other was a beige sedan with two flat tires, and had taken replacement wheels from another car. The SUV was on its way to Loraln now.

As for the sedan, it was currently at the back of a two car convoy that was heading east. He wasn't sure if they had gotten through into Sandusky yet, but if the sun was any indication, they'd been driving for three hours. He glanced at the clock on the car dashboard. It read '12:49 P.M.' _Four hours, then_.

With Nate and Katherine in the truck in the front of the line, Sven shared the sedan with Peter, Brooke and Simon. Sven was sitting in the front seat, Peter behind the wheel. He kept one hand on top of the wheel, the other resting on the armrest beside the cup holders. Sven turned around and glanced at the people in the backseat.

Simon kept his eyes squeezed shut, jaw clenched and head down. This was not the face of a person that was sleeping. Brooke had an elbow braced against the door and the hand of that arm under her chin. With her other hand, she idly twisted the hilt of the knife in her hand, as if trying to learn every curve of it without looking at it. A small bandage adorned her cheek; they hadn't put their medical gear in with the rest of the supplies at the Christmas tree.

Sven sighed. If they had had anything at all, he probably would offer it to one of them, but he didn't have so much as a glass of water.

"Any idea where we are?" he asked.

"We got off the highway a few minutes ago," Peter answered. "Shouldn't be long now."

"Nice," Sven grunted.

Simon shuffled in the seat behind him. Sven leaned forward and opened the glove compartment. The sort popped open, revealing a layer of CD's and napkins inside.

"Already checked in there," Peter said. "Nothing."

"I wouldn't be too sure of that. When was the last time you heard music?"

"I'll pass."

"Aw, come on," Sven pressed. He rifled through the cases in the compartment. "I've got _Love at First Sting_ by Scorpions. Uh, _Permanent Vacation_ by Aerosmith." He found a CD case without a wrapping and a standard burned disc inside. He pulled the custom drive, reading the marker print. "Oh, I got one! It's a song from Cledus T. Judd called _Tree's on Fire."_

Simon groaned behind him, but Peter chuckled. "I think Cledus was a country singer."

"So?"

"Hey, when you're listening to a song about burning something down, country is not the way to go," he joked.

Simon groaned a little louder this time while the two men in front chuckled with each other. "Enough," he begged.

"Come on, Simon," Peter complained lightly. "You only got drunk and did what any sane, drunk person would do."

"I burned all of our stuff," Simon pointed out.

"So? You made our food a little extra crispy," Sven said. He got a stifled laugh out of Brooke with that one.

"So crispy that we can't eat it?" Simon checked.

"Eh, I was getting sick of peaches anyway," Peter said.

"And I burned the water. How the hell do you even burn water?"

"Don't give yourself too much credit," Brooke muttered. "You burned the containers. The water simply went with it."

Simon scoffed, leaning forward and pressing his forehead to the back of Sven's seat. Sven watched him in the mirror on his side as best he could through the window.

"Well," Brooke said. "If you want me to be honest, then I'm really not happy about any of it."

Furrowing his brow, Sven sat up and turned around, looking at her. "What's wrong?"

"You know what's wrong." Brooke wasn't holding the knife anymore, but she was still holding her chin. "We don't have anything to eat."

"Road trips are never any fun without snacks," Peter commented.

Brooke scoffed herself and went back to staring out the window.

It suddenly occurred to Sven that they had probably been in the car too long for a simple drive across two counties. "Hey, did you say we just got off the highway?"

"Yeah."

"Then why are we still driving? It's been four hours."

"The ramp to Highway 80 was completely blocked off."

Sven started. "You're kidding."

"No, seriously. We had to go all the way around 475 just to get up the bridge across the Maumee."

"The Maumee River is to the north of the church," Sven said. "Why'd we go north?"

"You know that Mohawk reserve down by the reservoir?"

"Yeah."

"Well, there's this huge fucking pack of the demons down there hanging around the reserve. Think the government tried to set up some kind of defense there for people. Kind of ironic, really; after so long of abusing them, we run to them for help. We took their land long ago, and now we had to take what little they had left for their own safety.

"Anyway, long story short, all of them are demons now. Whether they killed each other or something else, it doesn't matter. What _does_ matter is that every single one of them- maybe nine or ten-thousand in number- they blocked us off. They looked like they were headed somewhere to the northeast. The lot of them might've come from Cincinnati, and now they're off to the northeast. They'll pass through Columbus and Toledo and keep going until they get blocked by the Mohawk Wall and head east from there."

"They coming near us?" Sven asked.

"No. They're heading out to Rochester and Cleveland and Wellington in Loraln, but there's so many rivers in their path that it could take months."

Sven felt the pressure from Simon's forehead come off of the headrest of his seat. "Hey, if they reach Cleveland, they'll get into Lake Michigan," Simon said. "Can you imagine what'll happen to the water if _ten-thousand_ demons get into the lake?"

A silence fell over them. Sven could imagine it very well: the water could very well turn a different color entirely after that. A Great Lake of fresh water suddenly murky and tainted. The fish that could live in fresh water would all die.

Sven breathed out. "Oh, no," he said in a serious voice. "Christmas'll be ruined."

Brooke sputtered something out incredulously. "What? What's wrong with? How could you even say-"

She was interrupted by Peter's sudden laughter. It began as something small and low in his throat before it grew to something resembling more of a cackle. Sven uneasily joined in the laughter, though that uneasiness soon dissipated and became a level of comfort he hadn't felt with anyone in a long time. Brooke kept a straight face at this, however difficult it might have been. Simon began laughing before too long, smacking the door twice in his quaking.

Sven turned around and saw Brooke still keeping a frown on her face. He cut off in his laughter when she directed her frown to him. Simon followed his cue when he saw her expression.

Peter stopped after realizing he was alone in his cackling. Brooke shook her head. "I'll never understand you boys."

Sven turned back and slumped in his seat. He exchanged a glance with Peter, who took his off of the road and gave him a look that said "What do you expect me to do?" Both men turned forward to face the road out the windshield.

Suddenly, all four occupants of the car broke out into laughter.

Peter continued in his laughter as he followed Nate's truck off the road and onto a narrow dirt path. The car continued coasting down a hill and to the left before a large, rounded building on the waterfront. It had a lot of boarded-up windows along the side of the building for a roundhouse that faced the them. There really wasn't anything to look at along the landscape back during the way they were driving in. Perhaps it has been different when the place had been in use.

It was clearly a residential building, but since it was so large and it had such a quiet location, it had to be some sort of hotel. A four-story hotel on the waterfront of Lake Michigan… perhaps there could be a boathouse around back with a boat and a woman inside.

 _If Lilly's here, I have to find some way to warn her,_ Sven thought. It wasn't that he didn't trust his group to let an innocent woman go if it didn't look like she was bitten, but he didn't trust them not to turn down an opportunity to get a literal boatload of supplies. They were all hungry, and they didn't know when their next meal would be. If they found Lilly and Katherine demanded the food, he wasn't sure what would happen. He had to get to her first and alone.

Sven hoped that, if Lilly had chosen to lie about anything, it hadn't been this. For some reason, he _wanted_ to see that she was here. True, her being here would mean she could be in danger, but he wanted to know if Lilly had lied. She'd seemed like a good person the day before; confirmation would be nice.

The car rolled to a stop, though Nate's truck continued for several more seconds. It only came to a stop once it was in the shade. That put him and Katherine pretty close the building, as the sun was a little beyond directly above their heads.

Peter took the keys out of the ignition, and he unlocked the doors with a button on his door. The lights overhead came on and flickered out in less than a second. _Must be broken_.

The doors of the truck opened on each side. Katherine stepped out and signaled to them that they could get out as well. Sven undid his seatbelt and opened his door.

The air took on an immediate change outside of the car. It felt _stale_. Like the environment was wholly deadened to life, and that its presence made everything that dragged itself across the land run back to its holes. Maybe the air was dead.

Simon opened his door as Sven's closed. It took some effort for Simon to get out of the car, gripping the sides of the doorway tightly. He groaned when he stood all the way up, and he lost one foot's balance to his swaying in the air. He shut the door and placed two hands on the roof of the car, leaning forward and placing his forehead against the back of his hands.

Sven placed a hand on his shoulder. "You okay?"

He nodded against his hands, though Sven could see his chin quivering. "Headache."

"Yeah," Sven agreed, turning to look away towards the building. "Maybe it wasn't the best idea to make you fast when hungover."

Another nod. "I'm out of cigarettes."

Sven turned to him sharply. "You cannot be serious. You need something to drink, not to smoke."

Simon stood up straight and grinned. "Well, that would be nice too."

Sven grimaced, turning away and walking around the car to get to Peter. He sat against the driver's side door, back pressed to the window. "Who's babysitting him first?"

Peter looked around at the landscape of the resort grounds. "I don't know. Might wanna ask Katherine."

"If I ask, it's gonna be me," Sven said.

"Yeah, well, I'd like a moment with Brooke when we get inside. Alone."

"Fine. Jesus, you make it sound like we didn't just get through a four hour drive."

"You slept through it," Peter pointed out.

Sven cocked his head. "That's not what I meant."

"Take whatever you meant and go babysit Simon. I'm busy."

"Sure thing." He moved away from Peter and on to Katherine. She was with Nate at the wall of the resort. There was a picture frame that both of them were studying; a detailed floor plan of the first two floors of the building. There was a large ballroom in the center of the round building, though the room was listed as squarish. Along with the ballroom, there was a lobby listed along with a small station room of employee equipment. Basically, everything to be expected of a waterfront resort.

He caught a bit of the end of one of Katherine's sentences as he approached. "… wherever the locks are." Katherine heard him coming near and turned to him. "Ah, Sven. What do you think of this place?"

Nate looked at him too. Bollocks. The man- whatever he was- flashed a smirk at him. It disappeared soon thereafter, but Sven knew it was there.

And, of course, once Katherine had looked at Sven, he had felt the stab of alarm he always felt. Seeing Nate and her both staring at him made him wince.

"Are you well, Sven?" Katherine asked. "Is it the hunger?"

 _No, it's your stupid way of speaking_. Nevertheless, he found that he could tear his eyes away from Nate and his. He hadn't grown accustomed to Nate, but he had learned how to talk around the man. "I'm fine," he answered in a voice that belied his previous fright. "It's a big place. Ought to be something in there that we can get to first."

Katherine looked disturbed. "Well, if the Lord send our path to us, then he delivereth to us his gifts."

Sven's mouth hung open. He had to literally contain himself to prevent from rolling his eyes. "How're we going to work here?" Sven asked. "I can go with Simon if you need me to." _I really don't want to, though,_ he added internally.

"I thank you for your offer, child," Katherine said in her special, regal way of speaking. The grays of her locks stood out now that she was using her "formal" dialect. It was still a wonder how the reverend was able to keep herself still when talking like that. "That, however will not be necessary."

"Okay."

"I will take my child and search for our needs. Nathaniel, however, requires a partner to search with."

Sven's eyes did not widen at this; that would have indicated horror. No, what he was experiencing was far beyond that. Instead of his eyes changing size or shape, his forehead changed size and shape. His brow unwrinkled as far as it possibly could, his jaw dropped as far as it possibly could, and his ears perked out as far as they possibly could.

 _Nate?_ This had to be some sort of cruel joke. He had to go with _Nate?_ He shouldn't have let Katherine go with him and stay in that truck for four hours. That would be bound to make anyone crazy and not want to spend any time with him.

Nate smiled in his own special way. He knew he had won.

 _That must be why Nate gave up his rations yesterday._ _et shot our look for supplies, I think we'_ _He wasn't offered a choice on where he would go; he was offered a choice on who he would go with_. Sven couldn't refuse this. Simon and Katherine were already taken, and Brooke and Peter would go on together for pretty the whole day if Katherine allowed Brooke- still recovering from the damage dealt to her the previous day- to do whatever she wanted.

 _Bollocks! Why didn't I ask where Nate would be going before I said anything?!_ He'd personally screw over Lilly and throw her under the bus if it meant magically being sent back in time so he could avoid this.

Why would Nate specifically ask for him in the first place?

Sven steeled himself. "I would be-" he cleared his throat- "happy-" he cleared his throat again, this time a bit louder- "to go with Nathaniel."

"Excellent!" Katherine said. Simon and the others were coming near. Katherine turned to address all of them, keeping her back against the wall. It wasn't her leaning on the wall for support, but her using the wall as a target. "We have a new reason to thank the Lord. Today, we have our salvation."

"Calm down, Mommy," Nate said in a really creepy way. "We haven't gotten inside yet."

"Please don't call her that," Simon begged. "At least don't say it when I'm around."

Nate shrugged innocently. "Certainly."

Sven shut his eyes and turned his head to the side. Did he really just say that?

Peter grunted. "How're we doing this?"

Nate raised a hand, resembling more of a schoolboy waiting for the teacher to call on him in that gesture. "We could go off in pairs and spread out. Cover more ground that way."

 _Dammit,_ Sven thought. _Nate really wants to be alone with me._

Why?

"I don't know…" Peter said uncertainly. "Going off in pairs could make it easier for anybody inside to isolate and kill us."

"We don't know if anyone's inside," Simon pointed out.

"If anyone's in there, they might not be friendly."

 _If Lilly's in there, I need a lot of space to get to her quietly and first. If everyone goes inside together, I probably won't be able to get to her first._ He'd have to vote in favor of Nate's plan, even if that meant he'd be alone with Nate. _Here's to hoping that he doesn't want me dead. Or mutilated. Or a demon._

Sven sighed. "It doesn't look like there's anybody here," he announced reluctantly. "That parking lot's empty, and if there's demons inside, all of us bunching together'll make it easier for them."

Nate looked surprised for a moment at his words, but he quickly hid that expression with a darker, haughtier one directed toward Peter. "Yeah. What he said."

Peter rolled his eyes. "Fine. Katherine, what do you think?"

Katherine grabbed her son by his arm and pulled him over to her. He grunted in surprise at being dragged over to her, but didn't protest once he got his balance. "I shall take my son with me and seek the fruit of our journey upon the higher road. Nathaniel shall search through the beginning, and you shall taketh thou path through the glitter and gold."

Sven blinked. The beginning? That meant lobby, right? And what the bloody hell did "glitter and gold" mean?

Peter frowned, though not at Sven's expression. "If any demons are in there, they'll probably be on those upper floors where all the guest rooms are. You sure you want to go up there?"

"I don't think the demons will be able to get anything on us up there," Simon said. "Most of the doors'll be locked, I think. If any demons are up there, that just means more for us."

"Alright," Peter conceded. "Still, I think we should at least get inside together. There's no telling what'll be on the other side."

"Very well," Katherine decided. "If we encounter fate within these walls, we shall seek another place for aid."

 _Okay_. Sven drew his knife and stepped forward to get to the picture frame of the building's layout. He smacked the glass with the hilt of the knife, cracking the glass some. He then flipped the knife around and shoved the point end into the crack, prying a few of the shards off. Once he cleaned away a large enough opening for two fingers, he reached into the frame and pinched the paper, pulling it out.

He turned and handed the sheet to Brooke. She was first confused by what was in his hand- apparently not having been attentive during the discussion in the first place- but accepted it after he flicked his wrist toward her.

She inspected the building's layout for a brief moment, her eyes roving the paper. Satisfied, she folded it twice and placed it into her sleeve.

Katherine pointed toward the entrance of the resort, which was a set of one revolving door and two enveloping glass doors. All of them had at least some amount of red stains on the glass. That probably meant that at least one demon had been there at some point. If this resort was where Lilly was hiding with the boathouse, she'd have already checked for demons inside, right?

Nate led the way to the door. He pulled on one of the single glass doors by the handle. It was dust-ridden, drifting some specks out of the sides and top when it opened. Nothing jumped out at them when Nate propped the door open with his foot. Nothing jumped out at them when he whistled and gestured for Simon to get inside. Nothing jumped out at them when Simon turned on his flashlight and aimed the light at several different areas inside.

It seemed like a pretty defendable place, all things considered. A big place like this with so many windows would give it a lot of light on the ground floor, though it wouldn't keep the resident warm. There had to be a fireplace somewhere inside.

That fireplace would have exactly what he needed.

Sven didn't have his own flashlight, so he just brandished his steel in his right hand. He didn't have that improvised bola; the Christmas ornament had gotten lost in the swamp. He didn't need that thing, though. The knife would do.

Sure, it wasn't _his_ knife- the one he'd carried on him since the early days that he'd just yesterday given to Lilly- but the one he'd taken from the group's weapon stash was sharp enough.

He walked through the door after Brooke, who kept her silenced pistol drawn. Peter carried a rifle, though it was of a model that Sven didn't recognize. It was some sort of automatic weapon, by the size of the magazine. Katherine used the ceremonial blade that had nearly claimed Brooke's eye and had already claimed one life. Simon's own melee weapon wasn't drawn, but Sven knew it was another ceremonial knife. He also knew that Simon didn't have the rifle that he'd used on lookout duty; Angus and his crew had taken that. Nate's weapon was a pistol like Brooke's, just without the silencer.

The light really wasn't necessary in the lobby where they were; enough natural light filtered through the doors, windows, and a large hole in the wall immediately to his right. The outline of the hole had a lot of dried blood in it, which meant that someone had been killed or injured there. The hole, however, was way too big to be that of a single bullet, somewhere in range of three inches in diameter. Perhaps multiple shots in repeated succession. That didn't explain how the hole was almost perfectly circular.

That wasn't a concern of his at the moment. Not unless there was some psycho living in the resort who carved perfectly shaped circles into walls and any trespassers. Sven very much liked his body, and he wouldn't appreciate it if someone were to put a three inch hole in his sternum.

Simon pressed the flashlight button, shutting it off once everybody heard the distinctive click of the springs inside it. "Well," Simon said slowly. "I guess checkout time's passed."

"Shut up," Peter ordered. "If we're going to split up, I'm thinking we should all meet back here in maybe half an hour?" He glanced at Katherine for approval.

She nodded. "Sounds a solid idea."

Sven discreetly shook his head in annoyance.

"Alright." Peter hefted his rifle and pointed the barrel up at the ceiling while pressing the stock against his shoulder. He walked forward to bypass the front desk and into a room neighboring the wait no area. Brooke followed with her silenced weapon.

Sven patted Simon on his shoulder. "Hey, you might want to keep that thing ready. Never know when you'll need it," he said. "You're the one that's going upstairs to the guest rooms. I'm going with Nate around the resort."

Simon groaned. "Good luck."

"Eh, I'll be fine."

He moved past Simon and over to the waiting area. He found a few armchairs all stacked against the wall, leaving plenty of space where they had used to be.

He found the fireplace easily. This was the Upper Midwest, after all; the basic rule for any hotel was need for paying customers. So, if you and your establishment were based somewhere cold, you put a fireplace in the area with the couches and chairs. Travelers come inside, sit in the chairs next to the fire, get comfortable, and soon enough, they decide that they're too cold to go back outside and they decide to room for a night.

True, that would defeat the purpose of building a resort on the waterfront if your main line of house guests were travelers seeking warmth. However, that would generally happen in winter or early spring months. During the summer, the staff could expect a great number of both locals and travelers wishing to vacation on the Great Lake.

That way, whenever the person entered the resort, they wouldn't be inclined to leave anytime soon.

Now that they were here, though, all Sven wanted to do was find out if Lilly was here, scrounge any supplies he could find, and get back to the church. They were so far out that it would vessel by the time they got back if they really were going to meet Angus before heading back to the church.

Sven moved over to the fireplace. He wished he had time to light it and sit down in one of the chairs, but they wouldn't be there long enough to enjoy the plushness of the seat or armrests or pillows or anything else that made life enjoyable.

He knelt down and reached inside, searching the upper parapet within the walls. He knew it was there. It had to be.

"If you're looking for something in there," Nate's voice said from behind him, "you won't find much more than dust and ash."

"Ah, but that's the thing," Sven said, facing him. As long as he didn't look directly into the man's eyes, he'd be fine.

"What thing?"

"Hey, man, you're obviously not from around here, so let me enlighten you." Sven's fingers found what he was looking for. "We're in the great state of Ohio, and everyone this side of the river knows what a fireplace is for; lighting fires, letting Santa in, and hiding your best bottle of liquor in a place nobody'll look."

What Sven pulled out turned out to be a flask instead of a bottle, but he knew well enough what was inside. The container wasn't made out of metal or glass, but instead a false plastic surface. If it were real plastic, it would have melted in the fireplace long ago. Ohio people, however, understood this.

 _Bollocks, I think I actually have a plan_.

Sven didn't look up high enough to see Nate's eyes under his cap, but he could see the naughty smile. He was definitely having a good time with this.

Sven held out the flask for Nate to take. After a quick swipe of Nate's hand, the flask was suddenly no longer weighing down his fingers. Sven so his head turn away from him, so he dared a glance higher and found Nate holding the flask up to the light, perhaps trying to identify the type of liquor it was.

Yep. He did have a plan. It felt nice to finally have one.

Nate started smiling, showing his teeth. "Honey. Jack Daniels."

"You can tell without tasting it?" Sven asked.

"Oh, hell yeah," Nate replied. "This is one of the good ones from our friends in Tennessee. Maybe this really is a gift from the Heavens or whatever."

Sven turned away as those eyes returned to him.

"Hey, you never got back to me on a chance for us to… you know… get some good drink on our own time."

"I'll think about it," Sven said.

"You've had a pretty long time to think about it, mate." Sven heard him uncork the flask. A hiss of air escaped from it. "I mean, I know we don't have a whole lot of stuff back home after Simon drank more than he could handle and burned everything down, but there's still a lot of good drink left."

"We can't live off of alcohol, Nate."

"I think I'm proof of the contrary." He held out the flask down for Sven. "Wanna make sure it's not poisoned for me?"

He accepted the flask without looking at Nate or the drink. There wasn't a single imprint of a finger on any part of the pseudo-plastic, which was slightly confusing, considering this was the first time anyone had touched the liquor for at least two years. It had to have been covered in dust after all this time, right? There was no way he'd swept out all of it with his motions. Where were the prints?

Sven raised the small tube to his lips. The smell hit him as he went to sip from it. He hesitated briefly, enjoying the sweet aroma that had been kept chambered for years, then finally tilted his head back and let the liquor pour down his throat.

It was… good.

Sweet. Aged. Good temperature. Powerful kick.

Sven lowered the flask and swallowed what was still there. He let out a satisfied sigh, resisting the urge to belch. "You know," Sven said, gesturing with the open tube, "if this is poisoned, I really wouldn't mind."

Nate reached out slowly and took the flask back. "Is that a no?"

"No to what?"

"No to getting our kicks up, bro!" Nate answered. "C'mon. I need someone to share my stuff with."

"Did you steal that stuff when we had it?" Sven asked.

"Steal is a strong word. I mean, nobody else was using it, right?" Nate laughed. "If they don't use it, they don't need it." He took a swig.

"Yeah, that's _your_ logic." Sven stood up looking away from Nate entirely. His eyes landed on that perfectly circular hold in the wall. From this angle, it looked like a small drill had hit the wall. He thought about someone searching for their favorite drink in the wall, not knowing about the one in the fireplace.

Nate lowered the flask. "You just took this from an abandoned fireplace. Is that stealing?"

"The person who owned this is probably dead. That's totally different."

"Yeah, that's _your_ logic," Nate retorted. He took another swig.

"Alright," Sven said sarcastically. "Keep the bloody thing. Why don't you just sit back on one of those chairs and have a merry Christmas while I go around and do all the legwork?"

"Well, if you insist," Nate returned coolly.

He corked the flask, sealing it with another hiss of air. Nate strode over to the wall the armchairs and couches were stacked against and removed two of them with one arm. Somehow, Nate managed to get a grip and the power to lift both the small couch and the chair, taking a normal, walking pace over to the lobby, and plopped both down in front of the reception desk. He adjusted the armchair so that the seat faced the couch before he sat down in it and placed both legs on top of the other bit of furniture. He crossed his legs and uncorked the flask again, never having pocketed the thing before moving the chairs.

Bollocks. This man, wherever he had come from, was nobody to mess with.

Even though that was what Sven was doing.

Inwardly, Sven cheered. Outwardly, he sighed exasperatingly. "Fine," he stated. "I'll just have a look around."

When Nate didn't object, Sven turned and walked out through one of the doorways next to the front desk.

 _And the crowd goes wild. My plan actually worked!_

To wither side of him, long hallways with carpeted floors ran along to separate rooms used for staff directory amongst other things. Neither end was of note to him; each staff room would not have been used for recreational time when the resort was functional. Food and water most likely would not be down there, though medicine might be in one of those rooms.

Sven ignored them, instead walking into a rounded hall with three sets of ten-foot double doors. He knew what was on the other side of the doors.

He pushed open one of the doors and stepped into the large ballroom. The room of the glitter and gold.

Peter and Brooke stood a fair distance away from any edge of the room, Brooke practically sitting on one of the many linen-lined tables around the room. They were having some sort of personal conversation, by the looks of how close they were to each other and the extremely sad expression on Brooke's face. Sven couldn't see Peter's face from where he was.

He let the door shut loudly behind him, announcing his presence to them. Both of them glanced at him briefly. Brooke's expression didn't change from before, but Peter gave him a look that seemed to say "You see what I'm doing right now? Well, as you can probably guess, I don't want to see your stupid face right now, so you'd best walk somewhere else before I come over there and rip it the fuck off. Why aren't you moving yet? You should be running as fast as you possibly can; your legs do work, I believe. You have three seconds to do as I say before I start running as fast as _I_ possibly can. And trust me, _my_ legs _do_ work" in such an expressive tone despite the fact that neither of them were speaking. Boy, was Sven getting good at reading the looks on people's faces.

Brooke and Peter turned away from him, resuming their own private conversation. That was just fine with him; he wasn't there to chat with them.

He crossed the room to the back exit, which was conveniently located nowhere near Peter. The emergency exit door was slightly ajar, barely kept open by a piece of wood- likely a pike of some sort used as a way to allow entry from the outside as well as exit from the inside- that looked rotten. The red print on the handle to indicate to people inside that opening the door would result in the alarm going off had long since faded.

Sven grabbed the wood and the door, pushing the latter outward to open it. He squinted against the daylight that hit him next. He looked around the area outside. No demons around the waterfront, though he did see a motorboat (a Barracuda, at least he could think) washed up along shore and a boathouse a few feet away from the sand.

He turned back inside, making sure that Brooke and Peter weren't watching him. They were too wrapped up in their own conversation to be bothered with him. Perfect.

Sven slipped out the door and replaced the bit of rotten wood between the door and frame. Despite its rotten feel, the door didn't crush the wood.

Sven stepped down onto the ground. There wasn't any green here either. No weeds, no grass, no trees. He hadn't seen any grass for quite some time, not counting the stuff on the ground of the swamp.

Sven didn't care about the boat; any supplies on it would have already spoiled due to weather and any particularly desperate people that had found their way to the resort before him. All he cared about was the boathouse.

He began walking toward it at a slow pace. A boathouse like that couldn't have possibly been meant for the motorboat out on the sand. A canoe would be much more appropriate. Maybe a skiff.

Sven finally reached the boathouse, taking a moment to look back around at the environment. He didn't see any demons or Katherine anywhere, but he did see a vehicle parked on the dirt behind the building. It was a brown RV of about twenty-five feet in length. They couldn't have seen it from where they had entered since it would be obstructed by the curvature of the resort itself. Someone had definitely tried to hide out here. The only question was whether or not they had succeeded.

He tested the handle, slowly pulling it. It was unlocked. Breathing out, he began peeling the door open, margin by margin. Eventually, he got it open wide enough for him to fit through, and he slipped his head around the opening to peek in.

He didn't see as big of as boat as he'd thought he would find. Instead of a skiff or canoe, there was a small, four person rowboat. Like a paddling raft, but made of wood and shaped more life a skiff rather than inflated and shaped like a circle. He couldn't see the inside of it, as it was supported by cables and held in animation a few feet off the ground, but it was shaking slightly due to him opening the door.

Sven slipped inside and smoothly shut the door behind him, making as little audible noise as possible. He didn't see anyone in front of him as he entered.

Since, of course, Lilly was sitting in the corner out of his immediate line of sight with a knife being held out toward him. She wasn't in the motion of returning the knife to him, but in the motion of ready to use it against him if he came any closer.

Sven was glad he was able to read Peter's look so well back in the ballroom; he was going to need it here, because if her expression was any indication, she was experiencing _a lot_ of emotional turmoil and distress.

He raised his arms slightly, doing his best to show that he meant no harm. It wasn't going to be easy; the way that it could look- the way it _should_ _look_ \- was that he had led his group to the waterfront because a woman he knew to have had supplies was hiding there with a boat that she had chosen not to use. He tried a brief smile to reassure her, but if anything, it probably only made him seem more belligerent and untrustworthy. A liar, a betrayer. A… bad man.

It really was Lilly. That was still a bit too surprising to him to allow him to speak first.

"You piece of shit," Lilly uttered.

"Lilly," he said back. He had no response further than that.

"Fucking coward," she spat.

Sven dropped to his knees in front of her. Not in a pleading gesture, but in one that would allow him to get as close as possible with the lowest possible chance of being killed by his own knife. He crawled forward with a straight back and without using his hands in a non-threatening manner. Even so, Lilly tensed, taking a seemingly involuntary step- one that failed, as she was already in the corner of the shed- backward and leveling the blade to the center of his chest.

Lilly held her breath, and so did he. He didn't try to touch her or the knife. It was already touching the fabric of his shirt right between the lapels of his jacket.

He angled his head to the side and twisted slightly. Lilly didn't move. Sven opened his mouth to speak, but she silenced him with a glare and a quick crack from her wrist rolling. She looked to be debating something.

Lilly grimaced, lowering her arm slowly. He tried to speak again, but she gave him another glare. That glare softened and became more grave. "I've never been any good at this," she sighed.

"At killing people?" Sven asked. He didn't dare lower his arms or move in any fashion aside from sitting back on his heels.

"At killing good people. I couldn't even kill Lee." The tone of her voice indicated that she expected to die. No escape.

That wasn't going to happen. Not this time. He finally got out of his frozen position, leaning in and putting his hands around her shoulders. "You need to get out of here."

"You sold me out," Lilly chuckled.

"If they find you, I don't know what will happen," Sven warned. "They've gotten desperate."

"I should've known that someone would get to me eventually. Someone I could not just shoot on sight or they do the same to me."

"Lilly." This was bad. She wasn't listening to him. "I didn't bring them here."

"Sure. That's what they all say when it's their fault."

 _Dammit,_ he thought. He needed her to move before someone noticed he wasn't with Nate. "Here," he said, taking out his own knife. She didn't react, just staring at him apathetically. He held it out for her to take.

"What, you think another knife will fix this?" Lilly mocked.

He shook his head, though not as a way to answer her. He shook his head because he was trying to figure out a genuine move to make that would get her to trust him. He gritted his teeth.

"That's what I thought." She shook free of his hands and put her back against the wall again. "Look, if you're gonna eat me, just get it over with. Last thing I want is for you to just tie me up and leave me for the snow. Or the walk-"

"I need you to go southeast," Sven found himself saying.

"I told you I don't like boats," she retorted indignantly.

"Look, you've got that car outside. You don't need to get in the water. You just can't go west or north."

"Why not?" Lilly asked passively.

"There's a swarm of them headed this way. They'll be pushing in their way from the east soon. I don't need to know where you end up, but you need to get out of here. I'd give it a week before they hit the Mohawk Wall and get into this county. After that, they'll either go into the water or they'll wander around the shoreline to the other end of the lake."

She paused.

"Ten-thousand of them. They'll tear this place apart. Even if my group doesn't find you, this place won't last."

She exhaled. "Come with me."

Sven started.

"Lee ended up dead after I left him, believe it or not," Lilly continued. "I followed him after that. Found him dead in a jewelry store with a bullet in his head."

He didn't know what to say. Would he be making another mistake with this? Hadn't he already learned to stay away from this? There _was_ a reason he was so particularly afraid of Katherine.

But what was the alternative? Staying with a bunch of people who hated his guts almost as much as the demons who'd rip them out? With Nate?

He sighed. Why did he always have to face these sorts of decisions?

"I can't."

"They don't respect you," Lilly pleaded. It wasn't a desperate plea. It was… just a statement to her. "You said so yourself. Why stay with them?"

"They may not be my friends," Sven answered, "but they're still all I've known. They're still with me."

Her eyes went down, shameful. This was obviously what she had expected. "Okay." She put down the knife and stood up, pushing him aside. He stood up in following, leaving the knife behind. "I'll get my stuff."

"Good, good," he said. "When you get in your RV, you're gonna want to gun it. My people might get confused and start shooting without questioning who is driving. If you can't get to the road, you don't need it. Just drive up the hill and don't stop until you can't see the lake anymore. Keep going once you get out."

Lilly uncomfortably clenched her fists. "That RV's always had problems- bastard who fixed it didn't do a good job. It broke down yesterday."

"I can fix it," Sven said quickly. He hadn't been given too much trouble with the SUV Angus had taken. How hard could an RV be? "But I'll have to work fast."

She nodded, walking over to the boat. She reached into the bottom of the inside, pulling out a large brown book bag. She slung it across her back and reached in again, this time extracting a gray duffel bag that looked to be loaded with cans and packages.

She turned to face him. "There's another bag in there. You can have it, but either way, I'm gone."

He cocked his head, the bent over to pick up the knife. She nodded at him, indicating she was ready.

He nodded back two knives in two hands. With his shoulder, he pushed open the boathouse door.

The coast was clear, literally and metaphorically.

"Let's go," he whispered. He pushed the door all the way open with his shoulder and took off at a jog toward the building and the RV. The flapping behind him came from the bags moving at hopefully the same pace as he was.

He reached the RV, immediately opening the side door to the trailer inside. Lilly got inside, shaking around the whole vehicle as he moved to the hood of the RV to check inside the engine.

Lilly popped back out of the vehicle without the bags, shutting the trailer door behind her and joining him along the front of the RV. Neither of them looked too happy at what they saw.

The air filter and the radiator cap were both out of alignment, neither in their proper spot. He didn't have any proper tools, but he had two sharp objects in his hands. He lifted both knifes and placed the flat of one beneath the cap and the other on the opposite side from him. He twisted in alternate directions to replace it. It resisted his motions at first, but it began turning after some harder turning.

The air filter was not all the way in, but he'd need a screwdriver of appropriate size to push it in properly. Without that, he'd have to take out the battery so he could clear it out for rust or corrosion. He didn't have time for that, so he did the only thing men were trained to do: he smacked it a couple of times as hard as he could.

After three good hits from the hilt of the knife, the filter went all the way in. Sven looked at the woman beside him. "How did you do that?" she asked him.

"I wasn't in the military, if that's what you're wondering," Sven said.

She frowned, but didn't question him further. He handed the knife back to her, and she placed it in her pocket. Lilly then ran around the car away from him and got in through the driver's side door.

Once the door closed, Sven heard the ignition as the key turned over and the engine turned on. He smiled at his own handiwork. Who needs tools when you have brute force? Or when you have Sven?

He glanced at Lilly through the windshield. She gave him a waving salute instead of a smile, but there was a measure of gratitude in that gesture. He appreciated it; it had been a long time since anyone had been grateful to him.

Lilly tested the gas pedal inside. The engine hummed loudly.

Sven jumped out of the way, allowing the RV to drive off without him. He continued to smile as he watched it go.

The taillights didn't turn on as she turned. Good. She wasn't slowing down for anything like he'd asked.

Sven continued to smile as Peter and Brooke burst out of that emergency exit of the ballroom that he'd left open. He didn't look at them, but he knew it was them by the distinct lack of alcohol odors. Even from this distance, Nate's breath would have been noticeable.

But he didn't care. He'd done something good.


	3. To Dine With Evil

You know, it probably wasn't the best decision to keep quiet about… well, everything. I've done a lot of things that I'm not particularly proud of, but if I was to be honest with you, I really don't see any other way to get past it. Not that there weren't any choices I made of which I wouldn't go back and change, mind you, but the ones that were kept quiet are the ones that have really cost me with my "friends", let's call them. You're not my friend, but at least you aren't trying to kill me. You tried before, but you aren't right now.

What can I say? I could tell you about those choices, since I guarantee you won't be telling anyone this side of life. The first word you speak next will probably end in me killing myself, since I'll know this is a dream. So please, try to not talk. And don't make too much noise, either, since we're not alone out here.

Now where should I begin? Well, I suppose I should preface this by saying that this process isn't steady or constant; it's been a gradual process for years now, but there were several catalysts that sped the bad stuff along. The good stuff too, but those weren't really that important in the grand scheme of things.

The first slow part was my own self-ostracism and alienation. Call it a social problem if you must, but please bear in mind that I know how to be friendly. None of my actions were meant to make them hate me, but I fear that my silence sent a negative message to them.

They had literally nothing on me of which to base their hate. Nothing at all. So you know what they did? They became so single-minded about their feelings toward me that I was no longer a reasonable person. It might have something to do with some of their natural personalities, and my own brief comments to them during whatever interaction we had didn't help, but I could never contribute to anything.

Thus, whenever I tried my best to do something that they would consider right, they'd get offended that my actions were done only to put them off and outshone them. Maybe that's not the real reason why this happened, but I just don't see any other. I can assure you, however, that no matter what, I was going to be their scapegoat before long. And that, my dear, was exactly what happened.

So when I look back on it, it really isn't that surprising how quickly each of them good together against me when I did what I thought was right in bringing a wounded fellow inside our church. Every single one of them solidified their feelings towards me in that one moment. Instead of seeing something good accomplished, they saw a reckless gamble that had might or might not have been barely paid off, so we argued. Well, they argued; I just made the same point over and over again and hoped for different results each time. Maybe that makes me crazy.

But here's something that _really_ would make anyone mad. That night- the man I had brought in for safety had been executed by that time already- I was attacked by yet another demon. This demon, however, hadn't died from a bite. Despite what the others would have you believe, he hadn't been bitten before I rescued him. Bollocks; his eyes really freaked me out.

Anyway, I discovered that night the really crazy thing that everyone in the world- near as I can tell, at least- carries the demon inside of them. And no, that's not some deep, dark truth about human nature, but the fact that each individual will end up a demon regardless of how long they fight. Until someone gives them the courtesy of shooting them in the head, that is.

So, naturally, I did the only reasonable thing a man could do when he finds out something as horrifying as that; I told everyone I knew in the hopes that I could scare them so I'd feel better about myself. As a man, being afraid is not something I relish, so at the first opportunity, I, uh, told them about what I had discovered.

You know what they did? They said I should go seek help. We happened to have a reverend among us; she is, in fact, our leader. So I spoke to her and thought I was just talking to her about everyone but our blessed gospel choir. That I was making a point about how we were the holy few and that nobody else in the world was capable of such redemption. I think I must've confused her in my meaning when I told her about everyone needing a blow to the head, including us. She indulged me, which is about as good as I could get from her. I'll get to that part later, though.

After that, since I had proven myself incompetent, insane and… damn, what's another "I" word? Oh, yes. Incapable of cooperating. Once I had proven that, I learned firsthand how long they could hold a grudge. A year later and nothing changes. Nothing has ever changed with them. I'm still the outcast, the degenerate, the crazy man. I got branded as a coward and a fool even though there were never any times for me to prove anything, cooped up in that church for that long with no privileges to go outside except for gathering my thoughts on the roof and using the bathroom outside in a place where the smell would soon degrade.

Well, I'd slowly begun to accept the fact that I'd probably never see anything but hostility from my peers, and I was mostly right. Simon never held it against me, though, as siding against me might've brought his deeds into question.

There came this day a couple weeks before Christmas that was colder than hell. Nothing special about the day, really. Just the first time I'd really gone outside to do anything remotely good. I was going into the swamp near our church- yes, you heard me, a swamp- to get some firewood when this lady took my gun and demanded to know who I was.

Now, when I was able to escape from her and get my gun back, I decided to let her go. Then, my "friends" came along and called me an idiot for shooting it in the swamp. When they left, telling me I really couldn't be trusted to go outside that much anymore, I ran into the same woman who'd held me up. I let her go a second time at the cost of potentially finding a large stash of supplies that we would soon desperately need.

I got back inside, only to learn that I would be heading out east to look for said supplies. I wasn't too thrilled about going out, but I had convinced myself that Lilly's safety was my responsibility. Lilly, that's the name of the woman who I let go.

So the next day comes around and I'm off to receive some glorious gift from God that would save us all. I get there and find Lilly with those supplies and I let her go again. You see, this is the point where my people have had enough with me fucking everything up for them. Apparently, there were witnesses who had seen me just watching Lilly escape with a smile on my face, and those very witnesses decided that one duffel-bag full of supplies wasn't a magical enough answer to our problems that I could be let off from this. Maybe if I'd told them that the only reason I was holding the bag was because of how I'd let her go so many times, but letting them know that'd I'd known there were supplies in the area the whole time- which I didn't, by the way- would only've made 'em madder.

So we left and met up with the rest of my group at a location a few miles outside of Rochester; quiet place, out in some frozen over field. Guess what happens next. They're late!

They did get there about four hours after they were supposed to arrive, yet they didn't seem to regret their rather less than prompt appearance. Why? Well, probably because they came back with five duffel bags of supplies.

That's right. _Five_ loaded bags were better than the one loaded bag I had. Angus came along talking of some giant, walled community near Wellington that just _gave_ them those bags; talking of how he and Abigail had expertly devised a system in which four of them would go individually and two in a pair, all acting as if they expected to get into the supposed sanctuary and were denied. When each of them had gone and come back with a bag in hand, they left for the meeting point.

Suddenly, all of our problems with supplies were over. From then on, at random time periods, three of us would drive out to the community and scratch for another bag. That sort of thing's been going on for around six-hundred-fifty days now. You know how I know that? Each of the five bags had a marked calendar with the appropriate day on it to make our lives easier so when the gate guard told us when to check back, we'd know what day to go on. Though, with us, we used the calendars as a random time period for each of us to go up there and scratch and lie for supplies.

About a month later, someone comes up to our church with gun and thinks that it was abandoned. Well, we proved him wrong. The second he entered, Angus knocked his lights out. Katherine decided that we had to kill him. Again, I disagreed in the name of doing what was right. Again, I was outvoted by my friends.

Remember how I said Katherine indulged me? She did. So instead of stabbing the man in the chest like she did the guy I brought in, she had Angus crush his head in with his war hammer. He named that thing "Betsy." What kind of person names his favored murder weapon?

Anyway, with my final argument against my group, Katherine decides that I'm done playing "devil's advocate" and that she would be making all decisions herself from now on.

Her first decision; use Wellington as a supply source. Three people go up, three people come back with one or two bags.

"Only this is the first time I've come up here as part of the three person team," Sven said. "That's right; I've been locked up in that church for a year and a half now. Never allowed to leave except for bathroom breaks. So I just went up there to the community after Peter was sure to stay out of sight so they wouldn't know they were being scammed. I went up there hoping they'd let me in.

"But they didn't, just my luck. The gate guard- I forget her name- told me that she wasn't letting anybody in due to a recent plague that had afflicted a large portion of the community. She gave me a bag like the others before me, and told me to check back on May fifth. The calendar in our church says that today is April thirtieth. Unfortunately, I sincerely doubt that my group will be letting me out any time soon. The only reason I'm here today is because the gate guard has seen everybody in my group except for me, Simon and Julia.

"I'm supposed to be back in the car right now, actually. It's been ten minutes; Peter said he only wanted me up there for three. So that's seven minutes extra that I've been free."

The demon nodded in quick jerking twists of its head. Its jaws munched on the gag he'd used- made from a few of the bandages in the bag- to silence it. Both of its arms were tied to the tree he'd found beneath the hill overlooking the wall. The ropes were also from the bag, though Sven had no idea what the rope was meant for. A tourniquet, perhaps?

Sven sighed. Who knew going on a monologue to a demon could be so exhausting?

He stood up from the rock he'd been sitting on for the past few minutes, rubbing his legs to restore feeling to them. Spring might have already begun, but it was still pretty cold out in Ohio. He was pretty sure that last groundhog he'd seen had ducked right back into its hole, and definitely because it had seen its shadow and not because he'd been trying to shoot it.

The men and women of that community he'd just come from were the most lucky of the area if the report he'd gotten from the guard was correct about the plague; they weren't the ones who would have to tell Peter that their primary supply source might end soon. And Katherine… he didn't want to-

The rope binding the demon's hands snapped suddenly. It spring forward in a single leaping plunge. Sven jumped out of the way, slicing it through the ear as he allowed it to pass. It fell, striking its head violently against the rock Sven had been using as a chair. As a result, the cut on the side of its head expanded and basically tore most of the rotten skin off of its head. Part of its brain, it appeared, came out of its skull.

The demon did not rise to attack again. The brain hadn't been destroyed, but… misplaced.

Sven grunted. "Thanks for the ears. Really needed 'em." He looked down at the one that was no longer attached to the head. "Not anymore, though. I got out everything I needed."

The bag of supplies was only a bit lighter than it would be otherwise. He wouldn't have to come up with an excuse as to why it was missing fifteen pounds of food, not that he would need to in the first place. The rope was only a small addition to the package that was so insignificant compared to the others in there that Sven could get away with not having it any more. Perfect, except for the need to dispose of the body.

He couldn't just leave it here; the people of Wellington might find it and think that there was a stalker somewhere outside. Normally, that wouldn't be a problem for him or them, but he'd prefer not to be somehow indirectly responsible for the community no longer giving supplies to strangers.

He bent down and grabbed one of its arms, pulling back over to the tree. There weren't any leaves to bury it in- it _was_ springtime, after all- but he could use both the shade of the tree and a few of its branches to his advantage. Sven reached up for one low-to-the-ground branch that was so long that it was weighing itself down on the end. Its own weight assisted Sven in removing a big section of the end; around half the branch, which left him with a twig as tall as he was.

The stick shook up the demon's arms when Sven dropped it on top of the corpse. Good, good. Bury the thing in wood pieces next to a tree. Perfectly rational thought, right? Anyone would do this poor creature a favor by burying it somewhat.

With no other purpose left in remaining, Sven picked up the bag next to the bloodstained rock, preparing to put his own knife inside of it before noticing that the blade was still wet. It wouldn't do to spoil their supplies with demon blood, nor would it do to indicate that he might have had some altercation with one of them. He left the bag there and returned to the demo to wipe the blood from the knife. Perfectly rational thought, right? Lots of people used corpses' clothes to clean their equipment.

He knelt down beside the dead demon, placing the flat of the blade against the cloth of the shoulder opposite the large head wound. He pressed firmly against the surface and wiped up and down once before flipping the knife around in his hand and repeating the process and inch down the arm. As Sven stood up, he noticed that he'd left the gag in the demon's teeth. He had to take it out so that the people in Wellington wouldn't think this man had been killed while alive out under the tree. Perfectly rational thought, right? The gag was only there in the first place because he'd wanted some quiet.

Some quiet while he'd talked the demon's ear off. No wonder it had attacked him. He just wouldn't shut up.

Sven reached out to remove the gag, but found himself unable to do so. Confused, he tried to reach out again to remove it, but nothing happened. He looked down at his arm for an explanation.

He found his arm shaking.

Tenderly, he raised the arm out in front of himself so he could see what was wrong with it. As he did so, his lip quivered and started shaking itself. His cheekbones and eyelids also began to spasm.

In a quick motion to prevent himself from outright shouting, he bent down and plucked the gag from the demon's mouth. He tossed it aside carelessly. It didn't matter where it went, so long as it wasn't on the body's face. The wind caught the gag, whipping it around before it got a slightly stronger gust that sent it into the tree branch that he'd pulled off.

 _Goddammit!_ Sven shouted internally, though the external noise he made was a loud sigh while he slapped himself across his eyes and kept his hand there. _None of this shit is rational!_

This, right here, was proof of something that he should have realized a long time before. His group wasn't turning to madness without him; either they were dragging him along or he was driving himself insane.

It hit him. _I need to leave._

He had the duffel bag, one of those bags could keep his whole group fed for two weeks with at least two days of rationing for one meal a day. All in all, that was twelve days worth of food for thirteen people if they did ration, although sometimes they were forced to do so for more than just two days in order to preserve the system of their calendar. How long would that bag last him if he ran right there?

Probably a month or maybe more. That was plenty of time to find someplace else and get a system going for himself so he could survive on another source and possibly go back to Wellington for additional supplies if he was ever close enough.

However, he knew he couldn't leave right here. Not only was he not entirely prepared to be able to sleep at night with no one to warn him of approaching danger, but he'd almost certainly leave behind a trail if he didn't have a way to keep them off of him.

Right now, Peter and Angus were almost certainly getting impatient with him. He had spent way too long away from them for just a simple strategy that they'd gone over with him on the car ride on how to convince the gate guard that he truly wanted acceptance in and how to feign outrage at being refused (even if those emotions were almost real enough to be thought of as true). Making them angrier by making them wait longer by him attempting to leave them behind might anger them such that they would actually kill him. And they'd have a few hours worth of a drive back to the church to decide whether or not they'd tell the truth about killing him for betrayal or lie about him getting killed by demons.

No, he needed to figure this out if he could possibly expect himself to survive like that. He'd go back to the church. He'd live under the same roof as Nate and Katherine for a few more days. He'd come up with a plan and get the hell away to a place where he could freely say whatever he wanted to say and not live in fear of his friends.

Sven sighed again at the thought of needing to come up with a plan.

Peter had driven them back with a low volume of CD music taken from the glove compartment and a low silence of frustration from both parties. Peter and Angus had stewed over being forced to wait, get out and stretch their legs in preparation for their return trip. Sven had been quietly formulating a plan to leave.

He hadn't made too much progress. In order to get away cleanly, he'd need a few things. A few supplies, a general destination, a time frame and a way to travel. So far, all he had was a time frame: early morning. His best chance was to get a head start on them and get some distance and think of a way to mask his trail, which meant getting out quietly while everyone was sleeping.

He didn't know how he was going to do that, but he wasn't exactly pressed for time. He could figure out that part later.

Now, it was dinner time.

They didn't have a place to all sit together while eating to share words around an open table. They either ate in the lower congregation room on the first floor or the open room in the basement when it was too cold or too hot to eat. Tonight, it was the lower congregation room, where everyone sat either alone or in a small group on church benches.

Sven always sat alone when he could help it. Sometimes Katherine would come over and inform him about his situation in eating, as he didn't do anything to contribute to in a meaningful way anymore (funny, that, considering how often he'd used that argument against the others). Sometimes Nate would plop down next to him and ask when he'd finally accept to a drinking night. Sometimes Abigail or Micah would spit at him or his food in passing.

He had time to think while eating alone. That was one of the good things about being socially awkward: plenty of thinking time about how he could never go fix his social situation. Coming up with a plan… well, that was one of the bad things about being socially awkward: plenty of thinking time about how he could never go fix his social situation.

How was he going to get supplies for his trip? That would probably be the easiest part of whatever he was going to do. Maybe he could start sneaking supplies out to a hidden location in the swamp that he could retrieve whenever he made his move. Doing that, however, presented several possible ways that he could get caught and foiled before he did anything truly treacherous. All it took was one person going outside to use the bathroom and find a hidden stash of missing supplies in the swamp before the witch hunt began. He'd be the prime suspect with his negative social situation. No, he'd need to be smart about how he got supplies out.

An idea struck him that maybe wasn't the best idea, but one he could definitely build off of. Maybe he couldn't sneak out supplies, but he could still take some for himself and stash them somewhere in the church. It'd have to be somewhere nobody would look… at least, not at first.

He could hide a few supplies in his pillow and sleeping bag. Sure, those supplies would not last him very long if he were to keep it quiet, but there could be an alternate solution to using his sleeping quarters as a storage and transportation unit.

He'd get back to that later. He needed a place to go where Katherine couldn't find him. Someplace he could get to without leaving too much of a trail.

The answer was fairly simple; he could get back to that resort out in Sandusky County and take the boat out. The boat wasn't in perfect condition, but it was at least sturdy. Once the boat got back onto the water, it could get him all the way out to the other side of the lake. Or he could just stay on the boat if he wanted to.

That was a good idea, but to get there, he'd probably need some vehicle, otherwise he'd be walking for most of a day getting to the beach again. Even if he could get a head start on his group, he wasn't sure he'd be able to outpace them all the way to eastern Sandusky. Especially if they guessed where he was going or if they thought he'd try going to Wellington.

Still, if it came down to it, maybe he could walk. He'd have to spend a lot of time walking, since he couldn't afford to lose much time to sleep. He'd need someplace safe to sleep if he needed it, and those places would either be locked down or hidden.

That didn't matter much, though. He hadn't gotten much physical activity over the past year and a half, but he was still in good enough shape to be able fight or run if need be. He had to hope it wouldn't come to that.

Well, as for his supplies and how he was going to be able to stash and leave with them, maybe he could find a way to hide a bag the day he planned on leaving. Small supplies to go into the pillow, and a bag to be taken out quietly.

He needed a precedent to leave the church, so he thought of the only precedent that had allowed him to leave the church at any given time in the past six-hundred-fifty days. Unfortunately, that meant waking someone up if he was going to leave the church, or possibly face the risk of being compromised inside the church and getting shot at. Sven liked not being shot at.

Well, he'd need someone to go with him whenever he went outside. This wasn't a rule strictly set into place against him; this had been their standard bathroom policy since the water supply stopped filtering about four months into the outbreak, which was three blissful months before Nate had arrived. Problem was, Brooke was off-limits in that regard for the same reasons as everyone in the building required to wear skin-covering clothes at all times. After her, the only one he actually thought would do this with him in the middle of the night would be…

Simon.

 _Shit,_ Sven thought. He turned around and looked over across the room at Simon. He was eating with Julia and Abigail. Unlike Sven, the others were quick to forgive Simon for his misdeeds, though Sven wasn't sure if it was because of Katherine or because Simon had inadvertently and indirectly led to their discovery of Wellington.

Sven sat back in his bench. He hadn't yet touched his own food- beans, paste and half a potato- in the bowl. He didn't want to make a mess.

He shut his eyes. He knew that whoever he woke up would need to be dealt with in some way. He didn't want to hurt Simon, though. He'd have to come up with a way to keep Simon from stopping him without hurting him too much. Maybe he could've tied him up if he hadn't wasted the rope on the demon outside of Wellington.

 _Get back to the point, Sven. Hurting Simon'll be the least of your crimes._ Try as he might, Sven'd always known he would one day end up regretting his decision not to leave with Lilly. There, a strong woman had asked another outsider to help her survive so she could help him. Now, he was with twelve people who would all want him dead when the light shone upon his treachery.

If he was still going to try and leave in the early morning hours, he'd need a way to wake up early and stay awake without risk of falling back asleep. Quietly. In a way that didn't draw too much attention when everyone bedded down.

That one would be a tough obstacle. He didn't have the luxury of research to help him find an answer to this. How could he prepare himself to wake up at a specific time with little sleep beforehand?

He couldn't exactly set an alarm clock to go off at an appropriate time. Not only did he not own a windup alarm clock that could run without electricity, but doing that would run the risk of waking others up prematurely, all of them wondering why he had planned to get up at that time. And he couldn't exactly ask someone to wake him up to go on watch. He wasn't allowed on watch. He already did so little around here that he questioned why Katherine even bothered keeping him there; nobody wanted him around anyway.

Nothing came to mind. He could vaguely ask around about ways to wake up, but he didn't exactly have anyone to talk to in the church. Asking Katherine would merely get him some sort of metaphorical and religious response that would leave him more lost than when he'd started.

 _Where is Katherine?_ Sven looked around at the faces in the room and couldn't find the aging reverend. Was she in the hole or was she in the basement?

Was she even eating?

 _Maybe I could take Katherine as a hostage instead of taking away Simon,_ Sven mused. He thought about it for only second before writing the idea off as just plain stupid. Not only would he personally provoke Katherine's wrath in taking her hostage, she was a lot less reasonable than her son. Plus, Katherine didn't sleep with the rest of them, and it would be a whole lot more trouble than it was worth to leave the basement, go up to the third floor to get her as opposed to just taking Simon up one floor with him.

Again, that still brought him back to the problem of finding a way to wake himself up, or at least make sure he could stay awake whenever he did wake up in that time. He'd heard of people who could train themselves to wake up at a certain time, but those people had help of some sort from alarms and other people. Sven didn't have any of that.

Well, barring him finding any way to wake up at will, he could at least find a way to remain awake should he ever actually wake up at an appropriate time to slip out. Again, no research, but he could certainly experiment. What exercises could help someone stay awake? Not physical exercises, but actions they could take to remain awake.

Eating, obviously. Perhaps that could be an advantage to stashing one or two cans of food in his pillow. Water could help too, though a missing bottle might draw more attention that a missing can. He wasn't going to risk that.

Sven sat back in his seat. He felt better about his chances now, but his plan still was not complete. He had the groundwork, mostly, but he's need to work out specifics like timing and efficiency in direction later.

Right now, Sven was getting a visit from someone. Sighing, he grabbed his food from beside him to clear space for the person to sit down.

The person was a tall man wearing clothes of white and blue. His hair was shaggy but kept short, and he had a beard that was even less cared for. Marcus.

 _Huh?_ Sven thought. What business did he have with him?

Marcus seemed hesitant. "Hey," he began. "I noticed that you're not eating much. Is something wrong?"

Sven blinked. This was the first time anyone other than had expressed an interest in him for quite some time. Even Simon had been distant lately, coming to understand the social effects of associating with him. "I'm… not hungry."

"Okay," Marcus said. "Do you… mind if I take some?"

Sven held out the beans and paste for the larger man to take. He grabbed it greedily, smacking the can to shake up its contents before pulling off the lid. With his bare hands.

Fortunately for Marcus, it didn't cut or scrape his palm. He dug into the metal can, taking out beans by a dozen at once. All twelve popped into Marcus's mouth the instant his hand retracted from the container.

Sven waited uncomfortably as Marcus chewed quickly. Marcus reached in again and took out another handful. He raised it to his mouth, but paused. He looked at Sven and seemed to be confused by his expectant expression. He still had bits of paste in his teeth.

His face lit up in recognition. "Thanks," Marcus said proudly. He then took the next handful into his mouth and stood up, taking the can with him. Marcus walked away.

"He didn't want to talk." Simon. Behind him. "He just wanted food."

Sven sighed irritably, though not directed at Simon. "He wanted _my_ food. Only took it because I had it."

"Not true," Simon said, his voice getting clearer as he drew closer. "He asked three other people for their food before coming to you."

"I'm honored," Sven said flatly.

"That's the spirit."

Sven looked over his shoulder at Simon, who was leaning forward onto Sven's pew, chin rested on top of his arms. The past year had changed Simon greatly. Where once there was a silly and amiable fellow with a taste for charm, here was a dry, greatly apathetic man… with a taste for charm. It had not been an immediate change like the others' toward Sven after his arguments against them about the armed man; more of a slow process where each time Simon woke up in the morning, he spent a little more time on his back, staring up at the ceiling with unfocused eyes. Sure, he still talked to people like he wanted to be their friends, but he normally spent time alone just like Sven.

Simon seemed to consider their conversation over; the ramifications of lingering around Sven might get Simon killed, allegedly. He stood up from the bench and moved into the aisle.

"Wait," Sven requested. "Can I talk to you for a minute?"

Simon stopped, shoulders tensing. He didn't turn around to face Sven. "Not right now. Maybe after my mom gets us through the prayer session."

"What prayer session?" Sven asked. He wanted to ask next why Simon was calling it a prayer session, but he held himself back.

"She told me to keep everyone in this room for a special night of celebration. God help us."

Sven blinked. "Did you just-"

"Take the name of the Lord in vain?" he finished. "Yes. I don't see why it matters much at this point. I don't see what else God can do to me."

Simon walked away, not wishing for Sven to keep him there any longer lest he be alienated like him. At least, that was how Sven saw it. _Simon blames the Lord… for what? For his mother? For his stay?_ Sven hadn't been the only one to incur Katherine's wrath of total imprisonment. Simon had been kept inside very frequently, as the only ones who would always go to Wellington were Angus and Nate. Nate hadn't gone earlier in the day because… well, he didn't know why, but he suspected it had something to do with Sven's own circumstance of going for the first time.

Shaking his head, he stood up, taking the potato with him. He didn't try to bite into it because he knew exactly how hard it would be to get into it by just the feel of it. No, this potato would need to be warmed a little for him to be able to get into it. Perhaps a pillowcase would keep it warm while he figured out when to eat it.

Sven fingered a splinter of wood on the doorframe to the bathroom of the second floor. The crack in the wood was a blessed slip of imperfection in this stupidly painted hallway. We're religious painters really so frivolous with their money that they just painted a whole hallway green for no reason?

The church's bathroom. The room itself wasn't strictly off-limits, but no one really saw any purpose at going in there because of it not being functional anymore. That made it the perfect place for Sven to hide and store the supplies that he'd whittled away from the main stash over the past three days he'd been pilfering from. Nobody knew he'd been in there. He was placing stolen supplies six feet away from Katherine's office and she had absolutely no idea.

That also posed a problem of sorts for whenever he was actually going to escape; he'd have to sneak right past Katherine's sleeping quarters. This wouldn't be like having sneak around people in the basement, where they wouldn't think anything of him leaving at a lightless time of the morning. He'd spend much of the time on a higher floor and be unheard for the most part. Katherine, however, spent her non-waking moments in a room with a quiet background setting and a wooden floor. Creaks and groans would come from the floor and door wherever he moved.

He needed practice in navigating around the weaker sections of the floors. Sven stepped to the very corner of the hall near the exit to the stairwell and hugged the wall as he moved across the floor back to the bathroom. With each step, he carefully listened for any noises other than his own breathing. He kept his footfalls light and heard nothing, though he knew better than to be satisfied there. Noises were always louder when there was no other activity. If Katherine www in there, he had no idea what she'd be doing.

Katherine had made relatively few appearances lately, after all. Was she sick or something?

Still hugging the wall, he turned around and walked back to the door in slower motions than before. Sven took a breath and held it as he walked. He tried to the best of his ability to only walk on his toes, but it was hard to keep balance like that on one foot when pressed to the wall.

Eventually, he got the proper locations on the floor and the ones to avoid when moving. Satisfied, he turned to leave the hallway.

A door behind him opened. Panicking, he jumped onto one of the less noisy spots of the floor and high-hopped his way over to the doorway. Once he got past the frame and into the stairwell, he hid behind the wall and peeked back into the green hallway.

The door to Katherine's office was open, but it wasn't her who poked her head out of it. It was man with a blue cap on his head and eyes too large for his head. They weren't focused in his direction, but they still made Sven freeze just looking at them from the side.

… eyes. Again. Eyes. Again. Eyes…

Nate's head turned in the opposite direction from him, perhaps looking for a person who had made some noise in that way. That was lucky for Sven, as it allowed him to breathe again.

Sven was just about to pull back and run down the stairs and leave all evidence behind when he realized that there would never be as good a time as this to talk to Nate now that he had some sort of leverage in this. No, not in the sense of some embarrassing secret, of course, but one that would get Nate the most off-guard. Still... eyes…

He took a step away from the door and started stamping on the ground beneath himself lightly. Over time, he increased the noise he made with his feet until he felt it was loud enough to be plausible. He rounded the corner and pretended to be shocked at Nate standing in the hall between the two doors.

"Oh, shit," Sven said, dropping his shoulders back and averting his eyes down. In the brief glance he got at the man's body- he was facing toward him, so he couldn't stare for long- his clothes weren't ruffled or disheveled, nor was he missing any locks of hair, so that was probably not the reason Nate had suspiciously poked his head out of Katherine's room.

"Hey there," Sven intoned. "Didn't think you'd be up here."

"Were you guys looking for me?"

"Us?" Sven asked, turning around. There was nobody there. Who was he talking about?

"Angus and… you know what? Never mind."

"No, nobody's looking for you," he informed. "Well, I was, actually."

"What did you want?"

"Was just wondering if you still wanted to go on a long night for the town."

Nate narrowed his eyes in suspicion, then widened them in a grin. At least, that was how Sven saw it from the corner of his eye. It's a bit hard to tell when you can't look at a person square.

Katherine's night session turned out to be somewhat standard, given her recent week of reclusiveness. There was no particular Christian holiday that Sven was aware of that gave a person the need to become a hermit for a few days. The only time for that would be remaining away from others if one had committed an act that falls under one of the seven deadly sins. Repentance came with sacrifice there, or so he thought. The precepts of the punishments for disobeying were a little unclear.

Again, he'd eaten alone at dinner. He would have expected Nate to sit down next to him at some point to explain to him how exactly they were going to sneak into the supply room and steal the liquor. He would have expected some sort of reminder from the deranged man to let him know that they would be going for a drink tonight.

Instead, Sven found himself wondering whether he should be annoyed or impressed at how Nate had remained silent about it for a whole day.

Nate had picked his moment carefully, that had to be true. For some reason, he had simply told Sven to just wait for him to bring him over one night to the bottle collection. That didn't seem like a very good idea to Sven, but it was a definite way to keep him off-balance. That was pretty much all it did by letting Nate know that he was good for whenever when he really wasn't.

The way in which Sven had been notified was brilliant too; a sharp "Psst!" that had come from the stairwell after dinner of that night. Whether or not Nate knew it (though he probably did), he wouldn't have looked suspicious in this because nobody ever wanted to look in the direction Sven was going. Therefore, nobody had even known Nate was there.

Now, he was behind Nate, about to enter the alcohol storage room. This room head once held hundreds of bottles of wine. None of them were ever fancy- it _was_ just a church after all- but it didn't have to be expensive to be good for painkilling. Today, only three or four dozen remained, used only for religious occasions and really cold winter days. The terms that ratified "really cold winter days" were very strict considering that Wellington never resupplied them with scotch.

Nate placed one hand on the door and the other on the knob. It was not locked, so there wasn't much difficulty in actually opening it. Sven worried about the door making noise loud enough to draw attention, but Nate expertly kept it from screeching and ushered him inside before quietly closing the door.

Inside, a short, wooden commercial wall wine rack held the precious few bottles. The rack itself had once reached the ceiling of the room, but this past winter, they had scrapped it by removing all of the wine above the halfway mark of the wall rack with Angus's hammer, broken down for firewood. Still, the bottom half was sturdy enough to support the rest of them. Once, this would have seemed a treasure to Sven. A part of him still felt that way.

"Take your pick," Nate whispered.

These bottles were just an obstacle now, really. He had to avoid getting drunk here so he could actually think. How in the hell was he going to manage that.


End file.
